


Blue on Blue

by Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto



Series: The Bonds Between Us [3]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-25
Updated: 2013-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-27 14:07:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 30,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/979831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto/pseuds/Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Technically, T'Pol wasn't lying when she told Captain Archer she'd never "initiated" a mind-meld when he asked her to perform one with Ensign Sato.  Semantics, however she has reason to know, can carry their own potential consequences...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With all the cultural stigma about mind-melds that T'Pol grew up with, are there any circumstances that would cause her to engage in one... by choice?

Blue on Blue

Chapter 1

January 4, 2155

Meditation had not come easily this evening. It had barely slowed her breathing or quieted her thoughts. Still, she had given the exercise the allotted amount of time, had murmured the ritual words of preparation, had dimmed the lights of her quarters, and hoped, however illogically, that tonight’s results would be different from those of last night or the night before - different from the results of the past… how many weeks now?

TPol rose from the mat where she had been sitting, motionless before a low table which held a single candle. Crossing the outer room of her quarters, she stood gazing at the star-field beyond the view-port. The flowing Doppler-tinted red and violet streams displayed against blackness as the ship traveled at warp-speed went unnoticed. What she saw was the candle reflected on the port’s surface, shining over her shoulder. It would have been wise to extinguish that light. It only served to remind her that continuing the mental exercise would be a fruitless endeavor. 

She would make another attempt later. Meditation served as a discipline whether or not she achieved the desired results. Discipline, according to Surak, was the cornerstone of Vulcan society. Discipline in study brought knowledge. In honesty and behavior, it fostered cooperation with others. Discipline in avoiding the temptations of telepathy, or mind-sharing, created both personal privacy and integrity. The discipline of exerting mind over emotion brought tranquility, or so she had been taught, so she had believed to be true through her growing up years and much of her adult life.

Now, she wasn’t so certain.

The shimmering yellow glow of the candle did not speak of peace. The soft colors of her home-world: creams, golds and warm burnt-oranges woven into the hangings on her walls, had not spoken of tranquility for some time now. The measured, tidal flow of her breathing did not wash tension from her muscles and allow them to relax into stillness. Instead, it reminded her that had she exerted mind over emotion in the first place, as she had been taught, her muscles would not be tight.  
And, whatever other benefits discipline might provide, she doubted she would achieve any greater success in her meditations until she addressed the root cause of her difficulty, or to be more accurate, the many root causes that had come to light and grown like untended weeds over the past weeks.

First, she had sacrificed the peace of exerting control over her emotions when she let her curiosity about them lead her to experiment with the mind altering Trellium-D. Later, she allowed her resultant emotions to become entangled with those of Commander Tucker. After that, on a journey back to her home-world, she had begun questioning whether the teachings of Surak had traveled down the centuries unaltered, had wondered if the interpretations she followed were what he had intended. Ideas and beliefs on which she had built her philosophy, her very identity, had begun crumbling around her. 

And then, not long ago, she’d compromised one of the few remaining constants in herself- her sense of honesty and personal integrity. Maybe she had not precisely lied to Captain Archer, but she had decidedly used semantics to practice subterfuge on him. She’d known even then, that she would regret the action. Hadn’t she once told herself that semantics carried its own set of consequences?

She sighed. Just one more of many roots. If the analogy held, she had allowed herself to become a very poorly tended garden. 

Nurturing the many varieties of succulents native to Vulcan had been her mother’s interest far more than her own, but as a child she had often watched Tales working under the warm early morning sun as she tended the desert blooms in the courtyard of their home. She had listened to her mother’s words as her strong, nimble fingers made their gentle, insistent way through tangles of fat, grey-green leaves. 

“Often,” TLes had said, as she released a cluster of flowers to flow in a fragrant cascade over the side of a large ceramic planter. “One twisted stem can bind up many others, though, at first, it can be difficult to know which one it is. Still, they may all be freed, undamaged, if the gardener realizes they all are important to the plant’s well-being and treats them with appropriate patience.” 

TPol wasn’t sure which troubling thought was the root that bound her in a tangle of emotions. Still, she had tried to work free one of the more obvious ones earlier that evening. 

She turned from the view-port. Moving past the low table, she again considered blowing out the candle, but decided against it. Reaching her personal work station in the corner, she slipped into the chair before the computer’s terminal. She didn’t look at the lines of words on the screen, but at a grouping of small, personal objects beside it.

There was a hand-held computer pad filled with the complete transcripts of Surak’s recently discovered writings, a gift from Captain Archer after their recent time together on Vulcan. Two holographic pictures stood beside it- one of that same courtyard garden her mother had tended, and one of the Golden Gate bridge in Earth’s San Francisco, TPol’s first off-world posting. Nearby sat a small, ornamental ceramic bottle filled with sweet scented herbs, a gift that had been purchased for her by Ensign Sato on a planet in the Rigel system when she’d discovered they shared a pleasure in exotic teas. Beside that a raw crystal glimmered, its jeweled facets vivid blue as they caught the candle’s light. 

Blue… On blue… Brilliant. On blue… Dazzling. On blue… So… bright and-  
Blurring…

But only in a memory.

TPol blinked. The moment of what humans called “déjà vu” was gone. That crystal had also been a gift, one whose significance was now known only to her.

As she turned to the monitor she saw again the candle’s small golden light reflecting on the surface of the screen, a reminder of what she had come here to do. 

After a moment, she began to read. 

Enterprise Interpersonal Communication  
For: Captain’s Eyes Only  
Designation: Private: Non-Official.

Captain Archer,  
This communication comes in the nature of an apology, both to a captain from a member of his crew and also to a trusted associate and friend. What I wish to discuss touches on both relationships.  
As you know, my mother TLes was a Syrannite. Sometime after I left my home to assume a position with the Vulcan Embassy on Earth she joined that faction, which stood in opposition to the High Council. I had strong reason to distrust their interpretations of Surak’s teachings regarding both emotional expression and Vulcan mental abilities. In part this stemmed from my encounter with Tolaris.  
Before my mother became interested in the Syrannite faction she raised me in the conventional wisdom that the use of Vulcan telepathy was an indulgence, even a sort of perversion, which only undercut emotional control and intellectual achievement.  
None of this is new information to you. You spoke with my mother and other Syrannites. You know first-hand of their personal dedication and integrity. And, as the carrier of the katra of Surak, even for that small number of days during our time on Vulcan, you have been exposed to many more of his beliefs and teachings than I have.  
But this is not about what I have learned from his newly discovered writings. It relates to something I heard my mother say while undergoing questioning by a representative of the High Council.  
“I am a Syrannite,” she said. “We do not lie.”  
I spoke those words once myself under similar circumstances, though it was more to affirm my loyalty to her and her chosen associates than because I had become committed to their cause.  
I do not know yet if I consider myself a Syrannite. But I do know I was less than truthful with you when you made a request for my assistance recently. Though you asked as my commanding officer, I hesitated to comply. With your reassurance and encouragement I did manage to do as you asked, and with successful results. Still, it has troubled me that I was not more direct with you at the time.  
You are likely wondering; to which of the many orders, suggestions or requests you have made during your time as captain am I referring? That may become evident if you choose to review the log entries embedded within this communication.  
I can only justify my response to your request by stating that in the most technical sense of the word I did not lie. I used semantics to circumvent details of an event I was reluctant to share. Any explanation would have involved another crew member. I did not believe it was my right to provide that information without his prior permission.  
Circumstances have changed. It has become general knowledge that there is a connection or bond between Commander Tucker and myself. Why else, I have heard it whispered in the corridors, was he the only male on board not affected by the beauty and pheromones of the Orion slave girls, if he was not already involved with me? Hadn’t the two of us spent a good deal of time together in my quarters over an extended period of months?  
What I withheld pertains to that connection. Since our mission to Algieba, Commander Tucker and I have had difficulty finding a mutual definition for our relationship. However, after your request to me I decided I must tell you what happened there. I have not yet discussed this disclosure with him. However, I came to the conclusion that because you were part of those events you have a right to an explanation about a decision I made there, and what happened as a result.  
For reasons which will become obvious, it falls to me, rather than to Commander Tucker, to provide it for you.  
My part in these events began when I elected to become part of a team searching for a missing landing party on Algieba Three. Shuttle-pod Two had been out of contact with Enterprise for several hours, when Lieutenant Reed, Ensign Mayweather, and I met in the transporter area in preparation to leave for the planet’s surface…

TPol looked up from the monitor. The letter to the captain was not yet complete. Aside from adding the entries she had made in her personal logs regarding the abandoned mining complex on Algieba III, she was uncertain how best to continue. There was so much to consider. How had the events of those hours influenced her reactions to the Syrannite movement and its beliefs? What did she think about their growing acceptance on her home-world now that Surak’s original writings had been found? How much of her initial reluctance to obey Captain Archer’s request lay not with what she had learned about herself on Algieba but from attitudes and automatic responses she had learned from childhood? 

Certainly those hours had caused her to question many of her old beliefs, but what new ones had replaced them? How much farther would her inner changes evolve? 

Perhaps, before she proceeded any further with her communication, she should review those events, not by examining her carefully evasive entries in the ship’s log or the series of half-answered questions that had burst into the files of her personal one in the days after Algieba, but by examining her memories themselves.

Rising, she crossed her quarters and heated a cup of water. She opened Ensign Sato’s ceramic bottle and brewed some of its contents into herbal tea. It was an intriguing blend of mild, sweet scented Earth chamomile and the light citric taste of Vulcan shavarit kie, an odd combination to find on Rigel, but an interesting choice, all things considered. 

As the brew steeped, she cradled the steaming cup in her hands and carried it across the room with her, not to the desk at her work station, but to the low table. Setting it down, she lowered herself to the floor. Somehow this seemed far more appropriate. After a moment, she picked up her cup. Gazing at the golden light of the candle through the rising steam, she gave herself to the memories.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

 

First, came awareness. Grey. Dark and sparkling.

Then, from far away, tingling. It grew, swelling from the inside until it filled her body, defined her form.

Before she found the word that could have named the familiar, though always odd sensation, it was joined by another. Wind, not only blowing against her face, but…

Through it.

For a moment, that awareness swelled as well, coursing through her cheekbones, the bridge of her nose, her forehead, then washing across the inner surface of the occipital bone at the back of her skull, between her ribs, and over her beating heart.

Then the tingling faded. The last of the wind streaming within her body trailed away, leaving only the familiar pull of a stiff breeze against her face and through her hair. Stars burst across the night sky overhead as rocks formed, hard and uneven, beneath her feet.

Years of training had her reaching for her communicator even before the last of the transporter effect dissolved around her, allowing the planet’s surface to come into sharp focus. “TPol to Enterprise,” she said.

There was no response for several seconds, aside from the crackle and whine of interference. Then, small and distant, came Hoshi Sato’s voice. “Enterprise.”

To human ears, the ensign most likely would have sounded calm. Still, TPol could hear a hint of strain, the battle of hope and concern in her voice.

“I’ve arrived at the designated co-ordinates,” TPol said, activating a small scanning device with her free hand. “There’s no visual sign of the shuttle-pod from this vantage point, though my readings have it less than half a kilometer from here. Have Mayweather or Reed reported in?” 

“Yes. Ensign Mayweather a few moments ago, Lieutenant Reed just before you.” Ensign Sato replied. “Both state they’ve transported safely. Nothing more.”

“Understood.” While the ore deposits in this vicinity had allowed a fairly clear read on the shuttle’s location from Enterprise, their ambient radiation generated too much interference to pick up life signs from the landing party. Still, that was enough information to calculate three points, equidistant from the craft, for transporting a search detail to the surface. 

TPol sighed, then wondered briefly if the edge of frustration in her voice had been audible to the ensign. Or if, before her experiments with Trellium-D, she would have experienced frustration in the first place. Sometimes it was hard to remember what it was like when she had mastery and understanding of her emotions. Not that it mattered at the moment, though it might be a serious topic for later meditation.

Unclipping a scanner from her belt, she checked her surroundings, approximately two thirds of the way up a steep slope. Rocks and gravel grated under her boots with each movement. Above her, scrub brush grew in gnarled clusters between great, craggy boulders whose silhouettes loomed, huge and jagged beneath the stars. Below, dense groves of trees tossed in gusting winds, their twisted, ghostly shadows sliding away into deeper darkness. 

It was hardly an inviting planet. Still, some yet unknown species had, in the relatively distant past, discovered an abundance of energy generating ores and set up a crude mining operation here. Though somewhat depleted now, the remaining deposits of several ores could supplement Enterprise’s dwindling fuel reserves if their grade of purity were rich enough and they could be extracted with relative ease.

She controlled the urge to hug her arms across her chest. This place was cold, even through her heavy Starfleet issue jacket. Far colder than her native Vulcan, though not dangerously so. If it became necessary, there were blankets folded among the emergency supplies in her backpack. For now, she trusted that the activity of climbing would generate enough heat to keep her warm. 

Out beyond the hiss and crackle of static, Hoshi was still waiting.

“No sign of the landing party,” TPol answered the unasked question. “Though I believe I am picking up a life-sign at Ensign Mayweather’s transport co-ordinates.”  
She stopped, the communicator still open in her hand. Tipping her head, she listened through the wind. Was that a voice? 

Nothing more came except another sweeping gust of wind.

“Commander? Are you there?” Even through the static and hundreds of kilometers of atmosphere, Hoshi’s words seemed closer, more substantial than whatever she had heard.

“I’ll contact you shortly.” TPol said, closing off the conversation along with the devise’s accompanying sizzle and fizz. Had she really heard anything beyond all the noises it produced? 

She listened again, this time searching between the fluting notes within the wind and then, beyond them.

“Captain…?” 

There it was again. Was it Mayweather? Reed? 

Possible, though she thought their transport points, relative to the shuttle, and to her own, would have been beyond the range of even Vulcan ears. More likely, it was an illusion created by harmonics in the wind. Unless… Was it possible she had caught something less tangible than sound?

That was an idea not worth considering. While it was true many from her planet possessed a degree of telepathy, her upbringing had warned her against developing it. If she hadn’t been taught from childhood what terrible intimacy could be experienced in the touch of minds, she had learned it all too well from Tolaris, three years ago.  
Though it had raised some interesting questions, it was a painful and disturbing memory. The V’Tosh Katur had been convinced he would liberate her, refusing to believe she did not feel limited by the laws of logic she embraced. She had struggled against the forceful probing of her most private thoughts as he invaded her mind with his will, knowing that well-suppressed emotions were bleeding from her in a flow that was horrifying, and yet later, after the shock of violation had worn off, strangely captivating. How intriguing it had seemed to look back and recognize there was a part of herself kept so hidden that she hardly knew it existed, a part which was intriguing and deviant, beyond the boundaries of respectable Vulcan society. Yes, a very disturbing memory, one that sometimes caused her to second-guess herself as she had done a moment ago, a memory she was not prepared to examine when there was a landing party to find.  
What she had heard was an illusion cast by the wind. She wouldn’t have given it a moment’s consideration if she’d left the questions raised by that meld alone as those from her home world had advised. Shared minds and expressed emotions were dangerous things. Still, she couldn’t ignore that faint call coming, it seemed, from beyond the hilltop ahead of her. What did it matter if it were her ears that caught the note of confused urgency or if it was some other sense, if it came from the direction she was traveling anyway? 

Clipping her communicator to her belt, she climbed toward where she would have a good view of the shuttle. A scatter of pebbles gave way beneath her heel and rattled down the slope behind her. She probed the spot for her next step with a careful, booted toe, then kicked away a loose stone as it wobbled beneath her foot. Before moving forward, she paused again to listen.

She heard nothing but the wind snagging in the undergrowth.  
“Ensign Mayweather? Lieutenant Reed?” she called. 

There was no reply.

“Commander Tucker? Captain Archer?”

Her words were torn away, scattered like useless streamers on the wind. Shivers rippled across her back and shoulders. Were they from the cold or a sense of nameless unease? 

Like memory, it was a distraction that would slow her down if she allowed it much attention. She would meet Reed and Mayweather at the shuttle. They would compare observations about the terrain and two possible entrances to the mining complex. Any notes left in the shuttle’s logs would be reviewed and plans made for the next phase of the search. 

Action would resolve the uneasiness which grew stronger with each step though it served no logical purpose.

Did Doctor Phlox begin to realize what he was saying when he told her she would need to learn how to deal with her feelings? After all her studies growing up on Vulcan, it had become natural to deal with them by suppressing them, along with the impulses they created. She had rarely considered the balance between mind and emotion until the night of that forced melding had roused her curiosity. 

What sparked an emotion? What freed it from the automatic impulse to suppress it and allow it instead to be expressed within companionship or sexuality? How did one relax into joy or strengthen oneself by sharing fears or anxieties instead of bearing their burdens alone? How could she learn where the borders were between suppression, expression, control and…

And the madness that had overtaken a shipload of Vulcans exposed to enormous quantities of Trellium-D? How could neural damage from a mineral substance unravel a lifetime of training and experience?

But that wasn’t the real question, was it? 

How had all her years of scientific experience allowed her to experiment with the Trellium-D, when she’d known it caused havoc with Vulcan mental control?

It was a pointless question. One that was as pointless as regret or embarrassment. They were distracting, purposeless emotions. But how well she had learned the ache of them, if not how to suppress it. 

For a moment there was a lull in the wind and she took advantage of the stillness to listen for that elusive call. Five seconds passed, then ten, but there was nothing except for the rustle of undergrowth.

“Captain?” That was the word that seemed to reach her through the darkness. Whether it was her imagination or an actual voice calling, she planned to have a word with Jonathan Archer when they were back aboard ship. 

Sending Chief Engineer Tucker on a landing detail to examine possible fuel sources was logical. But he could have sent Ensign Mayweather who, with his freighter background, also knew a good deal about ores. What, beyond an explorer’s curiosity, had prompted him to assign himself to this mission? While he was the most experienced pilot aboard, this was no more than a routine survey and supply trip. Any of a dozen other people could have commanded the pod. The captain’s primary responsibility was to his ship and crew, not to his shuttle. 

It would be a wise move if Starfleet instituted a policy someday that put selection of landing party personnel into the hands of- perhaps a first officer? 

Her communicator sounded. Choppy syllables surfaced through static. “Lieu… nat Reed to Com… TPol.”

The voice was louder than Ensign Sato’s had been, but harder to understand.

Unclipping her communicator from her belt, she flipped it open, then reached for her scanner. She could see his life sign moving through a screen full of electronic interference. “TPol here. Go ahead, Lieutenant.” 

She steadied herself through a narrow gap between two of the hillside’s largest boulders and listened for his reply. 

Was that a subtle shifting of the stone’s rough surface as her hand brushed against it? Would too much pressure send the boulder hurtling down the slope ahead of her, creating an avalanche of rocks, gravel and debris? Enterprise’s initial geologic survey had hinted at instability, though it had been difficult to get a concise reading through the ore’s energy discharges. It had roused no more than standard concerns about visiting a previously unexplored planet. 

But had that instability been the reason the mines had been abandoned? Or had it resulted from them being there in the first place?

With the slightest possible touch with the heel of her hand against the stone to help her balance, she eased forward and found herself on a narrow plateau. Wind whipping her hair, she stood, blinking in the brightness of two small, full moons near the horizon and a third, larger, halfway up the sky. 

“I…” said Lieutenant Reed. “…visual fix… bearing… half kilo… base of… hill…”

TPol started down the slope ahead of her. Shadows, tangled by three separate sources of light, seemed to shimmer as they stretched upward toward her. There were more twisted trees and more gnarled, stunted scrub. In the distance, a large lake reflected the moons-light and the shadows of a mountain range beyond.

“Understood,” she said as she touched a panel on her scanner which recorded her coordinates along with the basic details about the region’s geology and topography for the ship’s data-base along with its climatic conditions. While the cold had proven somewhat distracting during her upward climb, she knew that shifting her perceptions away from the temperature would not cause her to endanger herself. It was still several degrees above the freezing point or there would not be that wild crash and retreat of waves between the stones lining the shore of the lake. 

How much were those waves influenced by the wind and how much by the three moons? Because of her upbringing on an arid, desert world, planets abundant in water like this one, held a certain scientific fascination that she would not have time to satisfy right now. At least, as she began making her way down this side of the hill, there would be less wind to distract her with its cold, confuse her hearing or create voices out of the motion of plant-life.

There was something pale shining between dark trees. Another two, three, four careful steps downhill brought her to a vantage point where the glimmer began to take on shape within a clearing almost directly below her. A few more steps gave it definition. 

“I can see the shuttle-pod, too,” she told Reed. “I’ll rendezvous with you there in…” She estimated the length and grade of the slope. The descent should go quickly, even allowing for the care needed to cover loose rocks and uncertain footing. “In approximately ten-”

“Wait!” Reed cut in. “Here’s the rub… A shallow ravine… ‘mid dense… growth… Creek run… ‘long the bottom of… Looks narrow, but… Fast water… over rocks…Might take… ‘prox…” The rest of his words were lost in static.

“How long did you say, Lieutenant?”

More static. Had he been able to make out her words any better than she had been able to hear his?

“…Don’t know… Be may… hour… so…” 

“Understood. Keep me posted. Handle whatever personnel or equipment you need to access the landing site as soon as…”

“Captain?”  
It came again in a burst of startled urgency, reminding her of something she had not experienced since childhood or the weeks after Tolaris’s forced meld. It was like jolting out of tangled dreams, washed in confusion, and unsure, in that instant whether she was awake or still sleeping. 

That word had not come from the communicator. 

“TPol out!” she exclaimed, cutting off the transmission. 

Small stones tumbled ahead of her down the slope as she picked up her pace. For several seconds, they, along with her scrabbling footfalls, were the only sounds. 

“Captain…?” 

It was clearer than the crisp British tones of Lieutenant Reed had been. This time the voice was recognizable. 

“Can… you… hear… me?”

It was Commander Tucker.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Two

 

She could hear him, but not, she was certain now, with her ears. His words served almost as a beacon.

Did this have something to do with all the evenings she’d spent with him in her quarters, giving him neuro-pressure treatments for his insomnia? Those began during the same months she’d been experimenting with the Trellium-D, the ones following the devastating Xindi attacks on Earth. 

The call grew clearer as she reached level ground and approached the shuttle-pod, though it had come from beyond it, off to the right. And were those footprints beside the craft’s door? 

She didn’t want this awareness of Commander Tucker, or, at least, she wouldn’t want it once they were back on the ship. The two of them were friends… During those evenings together, they had discussed the nature of those neuro-pressure techniques. Gradually, the conversations wandered to the old Earth films he selected for the ship’s Tuesday movie nights- the ones he kept inviting her to, and about his anger and grief over the loss of his sister, Elizabeth which had started his insomnia. A few times he’d prompted her to tell him about being the only Vulcan on a shipload of humans. It had become apparent he had feelings for her and, Trellium induced or not, she was developing feelings for him as well. Feelings that she allowed to pour out in a night of what she had tried to think of later as only an examination of human sexuality. 

Being friends, or whatever their relationship was called these days, didn’t mean she wanted their thoughts leaking back and forth like this, out of control.

But for now, if she was being led to him and the captain, the wisest course was to follow.

Beneath the glow from the moons, she crouched, studying the slight depressions in the sandy soil. The multiple light sources tangled the shadows at the edges, but she had no trouble making out the marks left by two pairs of Starfleet issue boots. 

“Captain, can… Can you…?”

It was much closer, but somehow- 

“…can you…?”

-it was less focused, with a greater note of desperation ringing in it.

Her communicator crackled with familiar static. “This is… Ens- May- ether- to-”

This contact was more garbled by interference than Reed’s had been, perhaps even more than Sato’s. 

“TPol here,” she replied. She was aware that irritation had tightened her voice, but disregarded the need to suppress it. 

Ensign Mayweather’s words came slow and deliberate as he tried to punch them through the static. “Nah vair…well… Much int…fere…” 

She studied the scanner’s display. “I’m in too close proximity to an ore deposit to get a fix on your life sign. Are you picking up Lieutenant Reed’s?” 

“Yes. Lu… Reed approx…”

“Good. Co-ordinate with him and rendezvous here at the pod.” She paused, watching as a random gust of wind tumbled a scattering of pebbles across the ground at her feet, then studied the edges of the footprints again. 

“Ensign,” she said. “The landing party left the craft traveling at a perpendicular angle to its exit door. The wind has partially obliterated their tracks. I plan to follow the trail before it becomes obscured. I’ll leave markers to guide you to my whereabouts.”

“Un… stood, Com …” Mayweather began, but was cut off by that other voice. 

“…Captain…? Do… you… hear… me…?”

The pauses were getting longer between each word.

“TPol out.” 

Already she was rising, turning to follow the two sets of side-by-side footprints across the soil. If she snapped branches of trees and shrubs halfway through at about chest height, perhaps every ten yards or so, and left them to dangle and wave in the wind, it would provide a trail to follow, even if the tracks faded altogether. Reed, with his security training would have little difficulty. Would Mayweather observe them and note their significance? He had grown up in space, on cargo freighters. She must assume he’d learned something about tracking during his Starfleet survival training, because there wasn’t time to come up with a surer plan. 

Even after only a hundred steps, the footprints were harder to make out, particularly in the open areas. She picked up her pace. They seemed to parallel the bottom of the hill for two hundred steps, for three, then four: far enough that she had marked the trail eighteen, nineteen, twenty times, pausing each time to listen.

There was nothing but the stirring of the leaves, the rustling of bushes and the snapping of another branch and another and another. She heard the whine of the wind, the rapid beating of her heart and questions without answers.

How long now since Tucker’s last call? Why had his voice gone silent?

Her emotional control was far from perfect now, despite her meditations. It was neural damage, Phlox had said, resulting from her experimentation with Trellium-D. And she knew it was her curiosity about emotions as humans felt and expressed them that led her to experiment: not once or twice. She’d injected herself with the substance for months. But lack of control did not encompass conjuring a voice- his voice- to help her cope with the concern over her missing crew-mates, did it?

Or why would he stop calling with them still not found?

Logically, because there had never been a voice- his or any other- to begin with. Even after only experiencing the touch of mind that one horrifying time, she had become susceptible to its lure. Now it had caused her to put more faith in an intangible possibility than in the methodical search for the truth of the landing party’s whereabouts.

The trees were close together here, the light fainter and the path narrower, but the footprints- those real, touchable, tangible footprints- were deeper, their edges less disturbed by traveling wind and sand. No longer side by side, they were smeared, one set overlaid by the other as Archer and Tucker dropped into single file. They were closer together as well, no longer marking strides but the short, angling steps that suggested slow, searching movements. Her scanner’s readings indicated the mine’s entrance was very close.

Beyond the next tightly clustered grove of trees the shadows seemed deeper and her footfalls had taken on a different quality of sound. A trail of trampled grass led away from the path, toward a tangle of bushes, then around it and into an overgrowth covered hole in the hillside.

“TPol to Reed.”

Static crackled and fizzed, low and steady like before. Fifteen, then thirty seconds passed as the sound of it was the only counterpoint to her repeated hails.

“TPol to Mayweather.”

“Mayweh… here.”

“Ensign, I have reached the entrance to the mine, bearing approximately one hundred seventy degrees from the entrance of the shuttle at a distance of point eight kilometers. The landing site was well chosen. It was the closest clear and level area. Do you copy?”

Crackle. Hiss. Snap. 

“’mander… you say hun- did- eight -ers?”

She sighed in exasperation. She tried to dismiss it as a symptom of stress and won a brief struggle to keep impatience out of her tone. “Ensign, I repeat…” 

Only more static sounded in response. Still, she reported that she was entering the mine, logged the time of her entry and attempted to contact Ensign Sato with the same information. Uncertain as to what had been transmitted to which officer, TPol adjusted the settings on her scanner, then snapped one, two, three last branches, pulled a miners’ helmet with head lamp from her backpack and followed the tracks into darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Three

 

She found herself in a low ceilinged entranceway. 

It was old, rough hewn, still and silent. Ore dust and sand had gathered around the bases of support beams and coated several abandoned supply crates and canisters with indecipherable inscriptions on them. It formed a thick, undisturbed blanket across the uneven floor. 

Or… It was almost undisturbed.

The prints were vivid and sharp-edged as they crossed the room. They overlaid each other by an old metal set of table and chairs, which had been swept almost entirely clean. Then, side by side they vanished through the opening beyond. 

How long ago had they been here? Should she call out through the heavy hanging silence, or were these aging structures too fragile to withstand the vibrations of any sudden, loud sound?

“Captain Archer?” she asked, careful and quiet, more to test the carrying power of her voice than because she expected an answer. “Commander Tucker?”

Silence.

She had speculated that, as in a cave her words would not echo but would be dampened by the tons of earth now over her head. Still she was not prepared for the degree to which the sound was deadened or the sudden sense of isolation that seemed to radiate from the walls and low ceiling to surround her.

Uneasiness would serve no purpose except as a warning to stay alert and attentive. 

Following the footprints, she left the entrance room and moved into the tunnel. Twenty paces, thirty. She passed scarred walls and small, rusted out pieces of long deserted equipment. Fifty paces brought her to a hook mounted in the stone to hold a lantern which must have been gone for years. Beneath it she found another indication she was on the right track. A canister like those stored down in the cargo bays. The welcome word “Enterprise” was printed in large green letters beneath a Starfleet logo. She grasped the handle and hefted the container. It was heavy. She listened to the dull thunk as the canister settled back on the floor amid a small rising cloud of disturbed soil and a jumble of half obliterated footprints. 

The hunt for fuel ores had been successful. But where were the captain, the commander and the other canister now? Apparently- and she bent low to examine the tracks to see if they bore out her hypothesis- they had gone back, deeper into the mine again. There were three, not four sets of prints going in and only one leading out toward the canister beneath the lantern hook. Staying close to the inbound tracks, she pressed deeper into the mine. 

Forty more paces in the ceiling grew noticeably lower. Beneath her feet, the tunnel floor began to slant downward. It was not a steep descent, but steady. Was it getting colder in here now or was she not moving fast enough to generate much warmth? She came across another empty lantern hook and another further on. To her left, a smaller tunnel stretched away into the unknown, its opening unmarred by boot tracks. 

Two hooks further on another tunnel branched off to the right. One more and a shallow room with the dust-coated remnants of shelving- probably for equipment storage- was revealed by the beam of her head lamp. Here and there, a dull gleam revealed a crate or canister, a huge spindle spool of chain, a stack of tarnished helmets. If she recalled, these small side rooms had been prepared, especially in cultures with no transporter technology, as refuges for miners in the event a cave in blocked the exit. Referred to as sanctuary rooms, they were traditionally stocked with food, blankets, water and bottled air. She kept moving, past another tunnel curving away on a steeper, downward slant. There were more lantern hooks, another tunnel, and another small room holding a tumble of crates across the floor. Somewhere she thought she heard the patter of dripping water. There was a whisper of sound, the scuttle and scratch of claws and a small, rat-like creature dashed across the toe of her boot and was gone.

She stared after it. Something was wrong here. But what? The creature had gone off toward that last tunnel and had left no tracks behind it.

There were no tracks from the rodent or…?

She turned. Where had she lost the trail? When had the sandy floor given way to smooth, solid rock? 

Captain…? 

There it was again after she thought she had successfully dismissed it. The nonexistent call, the voice of her hope of finding her crewmates. But if it was only hope made tangible, wouldn’t the voice call out to her, not to Captain Archer?

Cap… 

It didn’t matter who it called. The sound, the, yes admit it, the feel of the call was so true to the person she knew it was illogical to ignore it. It was coming through so strong, so close. How could her imagination provide such a tangible beacon?

It must, truly had to be- 

Trip! 

She allowed his name to flow free of any rank or formality as relief flooded through her. At this moment he was not Chief Engineer, not Commander Tucker or even Charles. He was just Trip, the human- the person- she had shared more of herself with than any other and in whose arms she’d spent a long, sweet adventurous night.  
Along with her heartbeat, her step speeded up.

He was so close that one small syllable of his was almost a shout in her head. 

“Trip?” she called along the tunnel. Then, because there were more syllables for him to hear, for him to respond to, she called again. “Commander Tucker?” 

She drew a slow breath. Listened as she moved on careful, noiseless feet. 

There was no answer. 

She approached another tunnel and shone her light into its opening, then peered around a pile of tumbled rocks only to find it had long since been blocked by an old, rusted ore cart.

The silence was heavy. Even the faint skittering of the rodent was gone now. Only the echo of Trip’s last call kept reverberating through her mind. 

She called again, louder this time. “Commander Tucker? Captain Archer?”

Where had those footprints ended?

Captain… Can’t…!

She found herself moving faster than before.

Lost the… lost… I lost… the light… 

She was passing the small, narrow room with crates strewn, haphazard, along one wall. Lantern hooks: o one then another and another glinted in the beam of her head lamp. There was the downward slanting tunnel curving away with- She stopped, then swung the beam back, forth, back again across the floor. Was that the vaguest tracery of dust clumped near the wall of the tunnel where it turned off of the main corridor? Could it be the suggestion of a boot print?

Can’t reach… Can’t come… Sorry… Captain…

Almost certainly that was a boot print. TPol focused the beam at it. It was faint, little more than a suggestion of a rounded heel and the curve of a sole at the side of the instep… There was another impression several inches away and maybe a third and forth beyond that. Had they been made from one set of boots, or two?

The marks were so indistinct it was impossible to tell.

Captain, lamp out… Floor somewhere… Dark… So tired, Cap… 

Keeping her light focused on the rocky floor, she turned into the tunnel. It cut sharp shadows across uneven stone, catching flecks of something like mica reflecting them in bright glints from the base of the wall. A step further into the tunnel and it illuminated a backpack laying against the wall with tools and containers in a wild tumble across the floor. She caught a fleeting glimpse of an unlit, dented head lamp laying upside down nearby, a flash of Starfleet blue and an out-flung, work-gloved hand.

“Trip!”


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

 

TPol didn’t know if she’d said the name aloud. She was only aware of two, three four long strides before she was kneeling beside him where he lay on his back, eyes closed, near the side of the chamber. She could make out dark bruising across one cheek. Ore dust and blood had crusted on his forehead and matted his hair, and there were deep scrabbling marks in the earth where he’d made several attempts to free himself from a pile of dirt and debris. Should she try moving it, or would that risk bringing more down on top of him?

“Trip!” She knew she said it aloud this time, because she was waiting, watching for an answer, for any direct response. There was nothing except the sound of his quick, shallow breathing. Her hand brushed the side of his neck, just below the jaw, and rested there, seeking a pulse as his head lolled to the side.

Concussion? Asked her basic first aid training. It might be. Need to know more before I can try to move him. 

What other injuries might lie hidden under the earth covering him halfway to his chest? Beneath her fingers, his carotid pulse ran light and uneven.

Beneath her heart, something pressed. Squeezed. Ached. This was more than concern for an injured crewmate. This was- was-

“Trip!” Her tone rose, sharp, brisk. The ache of fear and reluctant tenderness knotting inside her were distractions she didn’t need. If the feelings themselves meant anything at all, Trip didn’t need her to be distracted by them, either. Not while he was in need of assistance and the captain was…

Where? It was what Trip had asked, over and over. Where was Captain Archer?

“Commander Tucker!” She loaded her voice with all the authority she could summon. “Talk to me!”

She counted to five, six, seven, before his eyes opened: blue, with the lights glinting in them as empty as those from the mica in the walls. Then he blinked, squinted in the brightness. Recognition came with painful, determined slowness. 

“TPol?” His hand lifted, fingers stretching to touch her arm, then fell back as he seemed, instead, to direct his attention toward rousing himself. “Where’s- Where’s the captain?”

“He’s not here,” she said, instinctively glancing around her, though she had already known as much. Still, there may have been clues: a pack like Trip’s, a dropped scanner or communicator, gloves or perhaps another helmet. 

But there was nothing. At least, nothing obvious.

“Was he with you?” TPol pulled off her helmet and set it to the side where she could see him clearly without his being caught in the brightest glare of its beam.

“In the tunnel,” said Trip.

She nodded. “This tunnel?”

He raised his head an inch, then two, his gaze seeking hers. She knew that look: Trip on the bridge, preparing to make a full report. “In the tunnel,” he repeated, more loudly, as though that would make his meaning clearer. 

TPol managed to slip a hand under his neck an instant before his head dropped back. 

He groaned. For a moment he was limp in her grasp and then his jaw firmed. “TPol, I… we… In the tunnel. In the…”

Yes, concussion. If the blood hadn’t given her the first indication, this struggle did. She had enough basic medical training to recognize the tangled search for orientation, for words and memories, so similar in injured humans and Vulcans.

She recognized something else as well that was considerably more reassuring. It was another familiar look- Trip, gazing at a schematic display, his chin thrust forward, his eyes intent as he concentrated, all his attention focused somewhere along the path between a problem and a solution.

Sometimes she had heard the captain toss him questions suggesting a previously unconsidered direction along that path. Now it was the captain who needed them to reach the destination Trip was seeking.

“When you left the shuttle…” TPol allowed the thumb of the hand that cupped Trip’s head to slide up, touch his cheek and stroke softly as she spoke. Crisp authority was replaced by firm but gentle prompting. “You entered the mine carrying the canisters for gathering ore.”

Trip considered. “Yes… Ore.” he drew the words out long, slow. “The captain…”

His groan was louder this time, his head heavier in her hand. He was panting as though with heavy exertion. Exhausted, unselfconscious tears glistened at the corners of his eyes, then made tracks through ore dust as they ran into his hair. 

“TPol… got to … Find…!”

“I know,” she said. “We will look for him,” she added, conveying as much conviction with her tone as possible. She lowered his head to the stone floor and, crouching back on her heels, grasped her communicator. “TPol to Enterprise. Ensign Sato, I have located Commander Tucker. Notify the Doctor. I have a medical emergency here for immediate transport. Enterprise?”

“Won’t… work,” said Trip, the sound of certainty in his voice rang clearer than it had done up until now, though his eyes had closed again, and he made no move to turn his head to look at her. “Ore.”

He was right. Even the static was a bare whisper here.

“TPol to Lieutenant Reed. Do you hear me? Ensign Mayweather…?”

Between the three of them, they could free Trip from the rubble, start first aid, get his report, then locate and rescue Captain Archer.

Static. She adjusted the frequency and tried again. “Do you hear me? Commander Tucker is injured and in need of assistance. If you read me, notify Doctor Phlox. The captain’s whereabouts and his condition are still unknown.” 

More static. It was much louder, but there was only dry hissing, no words. To the best of her knowledge, she and Trip were on their own.

“Commander Tucker,” she put a deliberate note of challenge into her voice. “We shall find the captain, but I need your help to locate him. How seriously are you hurt?”

“Been… better.” There was the faintest quirking at the corner of his mouth, a smile so faint as to go almost unnoticed. How often in their work together had they challenged each other to perform a difficult task? At first it had been in the spirit of irritable distrust and antipathy, later in amiable companionship, then…

In increasing… fondness.

Obviously, something in her tone sparked that memory for him, too. Encouraging. But there was another of those long, long pauses before he continued. “Not sure,” he said. “Ribs…? Leg, I think… Head… hurts like… like a…”

TPol supplied one of his favorite epithets. “Like a son of a bitch?”

“Yeah.” There was a sigh of relief when she gave him the words and another of those near-smiles. 

Her gaze moved to the scrabble of earth where he had tried to dig himself free. Had she been incorrect in her assessment that continuing the attempt herself would be counterproductive? “Commander, if I could remove some of this debris…”

“Bad idea…” He made no effort to move or open his eyes. “Not enough hands… No leverage to… lift… TPol?” 

She turned back to him. It was several seconds before he spoke again, with that air of intense concentration. “Nothing much… wrong with me that… won’t… that won’t wait.” 

TPol wasn’t certain how much she agreed with that assessment, but listened, motionless as he continued. “Captain… Now. Danger…”

She nodded, recalling the scrabble of pebbles underfoot on the hillside, the unsteady boulder at its summit and the pile of dirt and stone half blocking the tunnel with the ore cart in it. This entire place whispered of risks.

“Captain…” Trip’s words were slurring with exhaustion. At last he opened his eyes, looking toward her with an unfocussed gaze. “Dinosaur room. Lizzie… Blue… On blue…” 

She stroked his cheek, not allowing her imagination to paint deadly possibilities as she swept the room, searched his words, for an overlooked clue to Captain Archer’s whereabouts. 

Room? She’d seen several of the mine’s sanctuary rooms on her way here. Did he mean that Captain Archer was in a sanctuary room, waiting for rescue? But, dinosaur? And what was Lizzie’s relationship with any of it? She was Trip’s sister, Elizabeth, dead in the Xindi attack. And blue? On blue? 

She must get him to clarify. “Trip, did you and the Captain reach this area together?”

He was taut, motionless under her grasp. “I…” he forced a horrified, apologetic admission. “TPol… I…” Those reflexive tears were streaming again. She doubted he was aware of them. “I… don’t know. Don’t… remember.” His eyes closed.

He and the captain had been alone in here, but he didn’t recall what had happened?

Concussion, she reminded herself, suppressing an intrusive surge of irritation.

If she could get him to sickbay, Doctor Phlox would give him something to reduce the swelling on his brain. Quite possibly he could retrieve Trip’s memories within minutes, start his wounds along a healing course and set things in motion for finding Captain Archer. 

But they weren’t on Enterprise and didn’t have a way of getting there anytime soon. Her own breathing was growing as ragged as Trip’s. Even in this cold stone room, frustration thrummed hot in her veins. He couldn’t remember and Captain Archer was where? In what condition? 

She wanted to shout! Stalk the room! Strike the wall! This impotence! This helpless, furious impotence! Before the Trellium, she would have been able to seek and plot a direct course of action without needing to give attention to emotional control!

Instead she must think analytically, logically.

Resisting the urge to stand, pace, pound frustrated fists against the stones like a Klingon, she stared at the scatter of tools and equipment on the floor nearby.

There must be something she could do to help Trip, whose breathing was growing shallow with exhaustion and to help the captain, who was hidden somewhere within Trip’s memory. Or might be, she corrected herself. A blow to the head could erase the recall of events preceding it, at least from the conscious, accessible memory. 

But what about the unconscious?


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6/p>

If she had heard Trip’s call, it meant they shared some degree of connection. Maybe it came from long, close association aboard ship. Perhaps it resulted from the intimacy of their neuro-pressure sessions, or that night they had spent wrapped tight around each other in her quarters. Would that connection allow her to…

No! Her hands clenched, then tightened to the fists she hadn’t allowed them to form before. She swallowed hard as her gorge rose in revulsion. The very thought was horrible, painful. Everything she had been raised to believe rebelled against the idea of…

Trip’s hand raised, brushed her sleeve, fell away. “TPol! Gotta… Find…”

No. She was wrong. Not everything she believed in rebelled.

The needs of the many…

She could list them all: the captain, the crew who needed his leadership, and Trip, who, in his human way, would blame himself if anything happened to his long time friend, who was very much, her friend as well.

…Outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

It was an old teaching. She had been raised on that, too.

If circumstances demanded that she give her life itself for the captain or any of her crewmates, would she hesitate? How could it be worse to sacrificing her honor, her pride in exchange for the captain’s life or Trip’s conscience?

But had a Vulcan ever-? She made herself look at the word, no matter how much her revolted mind wanted to turn away from it.

Had a Vulcan ever melded with a human?

“Commander?” Her hand shook as she reached for Trip’s. She swallowed the tremor in her voice. “Trip?”

“Yeah?” It was barely a whisper. His eyes did not open.

“I wish to try to access your memories. I believe it is the only way to locate the captain. Have I your permission?”

“Yeah, TPol… I’m with you.” The returning grasp on her hand was slight but discernable as his fingers circled hers. “Do… what you need to.” 

Returning the pressure for a brief moment, she lowered his hand to the floor and released it. She drew a deep breath. 

Don’t procrastinate. It’s the only chance… He knows it as well as you do, or he would not agree to such an encroachment. 

Beneath her touch, the pulse at his temple was light and not quite regular. Despite the clinging dirt, his hair was silky as she sought the place that would initiate the meld.  
Though she’d never attempted this before, the neural connecting points were almost like magnets. It must be an ancient, primal instinct, long buried beneath centuries of more civilized behavior, that drew one finger toward a spot near his ear. It’s the only chance…

If this didn’t work could they still find Captain Archer in this complex of tunnels?

Another finger brushed the curve of Trip’s cheek and rested there.

The only chance…

If this didn’t work, could the attempt kill Trip or leave him permanently damaged?

The only chance…

She had known him long enough to realize it was a chance Trip would willingly take.

A third finger slipped into place over a blood crusted spot above his eye.

“My mind…” The spoken words rasped through her tight, dry throat.

The yet unspoken ones seemed to falter somewhere between her thoughts, her fingers and the places where they rested against Trip’s skin. From fear? Or revulsion?

I’m sorry, Trip. It’s not you that makes me wish to pull away. It’s me and this act.

She would not be able to look him in the face after this, or work in companionable silence before a computer display. How could she sit next to him watching some strange ancient recording during his beloved “movie night” once she had shamed them both by performing this abominable meld? Still, she must continue, for all their sakes.

“…to your mind…”

No! It was Tolaris, looming out of her memory. She could almost hear her own cries of fear and protest as the V’Tosh Katur’s mind stormed into hers, full of its own sense of rightness and a wild, zealous joy.

She couldn’t do this!

But it’s the only chance… Only chance… Only…

She pressed her eyes tight shut as though that would erase the sight of him, then shouted in silent defiance. You are no part of this! You’re only a memory!

Tolaris was gone. She was floating free with no sense this time of being pulled in a direction she didn’t want to go, but only toward Trip’s waiting presence. 

He would not hurt her. He had no cause to impose his will on her or convert her to another pattern of thought than her own. The only agenda he might have was the one they already shared. 

There was only an instant for a question to form. If they- no, when they- joined…? 

“My thoughts to your thoughts.” She heard her voice speaking from somewhere small and distant.

…when they melded…?

Would Trip’s memories course across her mind like a stream of ideas? Would she stand apart as herself and observe in flashes the events of these past hours? Or would they unfold as though she saw through his eyes? 

In that other meld there had been too much struggle, too much betrayal for her to recall much of what the experience itself had been like. 

That wasn’t happening here. 

“Our minds are together,” said her distant voice.

A heartbeat later it was joined in harmony by another.

“Our minds are one.”


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

 

Trip’s eyes snapped open. Low in her throat, TPol groaned. This pain hadn’t been there a moment ago. Should she detach herself from Trip’s mind before she caused him more harm than he had already undergone?

No. The meld was not going wrong. This was not her pain but his. Now it had become theirs. 

She drew a balancing breath. There were techniques she had learned as a child for controlling the perceptions of pain. Trellium-D had not affected her ability to engage them. Was it possible they could be used to steady both herself and Trip?

Our minds, our thoughts and our feelings are one. Our well-being is without boundaries, our injuries are finite… We can define them.

Nothing about this meld should be gratifying, but it was as she became aware that her cloak of pain control had spread until it enfolded both of them. Her muscles relaxed. Though she sensed no great fear or panic in Trip centered around the pain, nonetheless, beneath her fingers, the lines of his face smoothed out. Would this joining do as she had theorized and allow him to communicate with her beyond the fatigue and disorientation of the concussion? 

Our perceptions are one…

She was squinting against brightness, seeing her own heavy, grey-blue landing party jacket and oval face surrounded by a short cap of shining hair. Her features wavered- doubled, tripled, doubled again, then came into sharp focus for an instant before the shimmering, prism edges returned. 

It was odd, seeing herself from his perspective for that one clear moment. She had seen her reflection many times. It had not looked so vivid. She had never given much attention to how she appeared to him. She had acknowledged how well they worked together and how they shared a sometimes uncomfortable attraction for each other. But she had not imagined how he saw the quick, keen intelligence glowing bright in her eyes or the strength and confidence in the set of her chin and lift of her head. She had never realized he found her upswept brows and small, pointed ears so unspeakably beautiful.

It was a disconcerting experience, and a strangely humbling one. 

The observation was gone in a heartbeat as the connection deepened. It was lost with in the awareness that they had ventured into an uncharted territory to take a desperate gamble. They could tear aside their most personal barriers and still not discover the captain’s whereabouts.

An instant later, those considerations were replaced by the strange sense that they were, or that we are, conversing. Still, there was no clear distinction as to who said what, though she was aware that some of the thought patterns were her own, while others had to be his. There was no sense that time was passing as it did between the flow of spoken words, but that their communication was as instantaneous as thought itself.

That other meld had been nothing like this. The ebb and flow between her and Trip was smooth and noninvasive. She would almost have called it easy, except for the tug and hitch of neural disruption. Perhaps they could discover a way of working around that, if the degree of injury could be determined.

We will commence with a medical evaluation.

Even more than when she had activated the pain cloak, she sensed a profound relief pouring from him.

Right. Go for it. But hurry up, okay? Captain’s waiting. 

There is a head ache?

Yeah, fierce. Isn’t bothering us right now, though.

That’s because of our connection. How about neck, shoulders, arms?

Few scrapes. No big deal. 

But the chest is. 

Yeah. Right side. 

Breathe in.

Yeah, okay.

Breathe out. 

Ow, yeah, we feel it. Sharp. Real… sharp.

Bone on bone? 

Yeah. Think so. Ribs. Feel like we got a couple cracked ribs. Had them before once. 

The image formed of a blonde haired child. He was crawling over sun-baked, smoky-grey tar shingles on a steep, slanting roof, then unfastening the outer housing on a water siphoning device. Prying open the wire mesh beyond, he peered inside. Moving too far out onto the eves for a closer look, he tumbled over the edge, a sudden prisoner of Earth’s gravity. 

What about hands?

There was a wave of impatience. Come on, now! That’s nothing to waste time on. Bruised knuckles from where we dug the rocks to get free.

We? Are we talking about this “we” here? Or the “we”, meaning us along with Captain Archer?

Impatience gave way to regret as sharp as cracked ribs. Don’t know. Don’t…

Perhaps we asked this too soon. We must accustom ourselves to this meld, let our connection deepen before we retrace to that point. We shall concentrate on the exact, the concrete. Are there other injuries?

Right knee or maybe below it. Something gave out there. All one big ache right now, but there’s not much we can do about it for the moment. Now how about- 

Can we move it? 

Hell, no, we can’t move it. Wedged between couple of big rocks… Could be a lot worse. Not pinned under them anyway. 

Then we are less buried in rubble than wedged between stones, correct? It’s the pull on the ribs, the dizziness when we try to sit up or dig free that holds us here, rather than the weight of caved in earth. 

Yeah? Tell us something we don’t know.

These are serious conditions, but nothing that won’t hold while we assess what the captain needs. 

Damn it! We don’t know what he needs, or where he is!   
We don’t remember! 

But we believe we can determine his needs. That we will find him. We will now go back to the last thing we do remember. The captain was doing what?

He was climbing out of the shuttle-pod. 

Another image began to form.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Captain Archer, in the moons-light, was pulling one of two empty ore canisters out of the cargo bay. It gleamed mellow silver as he set it on the ground, then turned to rummage through a half open backpack. He withdrew a head lamp, revealing a coil of rappelling lines and stakes beneath it, a pair of work gloves and- was that one of Chef’s field lunches?

It was all coming through in fine, intricate detail.

There was an instant of partial separation, enough for TPol to recognize that her question- had it first formed an eon or an instant ago?- was being answered.

As she moved deeper into the meld, she could see through Trip’s eyes, know what he knew and perceive his emotions. At the same time she was able to define what she knew, from within her own identity. 

Now she, or rather Trip, was kneeling in the cargo bay, pushing a second canister toward Captain Archer, who, wearing the pack and helmet, stood in the doorway with outstretched hands. Then, swinging a pack of his own across his shoulder, Trip scrambled from the shuttle-pod.

“Nice night for a stroll,” the captain said as the doors slid shut behind them.

“Little cold for my blood.” Trip set his pack on the ground, lifted aside a phaser blade kit and an ore sampling case while he took out his own helmet, then tapped a tall metal cylinder. “Good thing Chef sent a nice hot bottle of coffee along.”

“I asked him to prepare two.” The captain grinned. “With reception the way it is down here, I thought there might be a considerable delay calling room service.” 

TPol remembered that smile from the day Enterprise first left Earth. Captain Archer was sitting in the bridge’s center seat watching the view screen full of waiting stars and smiling that smile. He had dreamed of exploration- stellar phenomena, peaceful first-contacts, possibilities wondrous and unimagined… It had, she realized, become an almost foreign expression these past months. How long since his smile had flashed across his face, broad enough to crinkle the corners of his eyes? 

“Real command level thinking there, Captain!” Trip studied his friend for one silent moment while he put on his own helmet, closed his pack and swung it over his shoulder. 

For once, we got no Sulabahn, Xindi, Orions, Klingons or Romulans to worry about. We’ll take a nice little field trip, scoop up a few ore samples on a planet with an almost reasonable climate, do a little of the exploring that called us out here in the first place, eat a meal not snatched on the eve of battle and drink a little coffee without needing to gulp it down before the captain hurries back to the bridge to make another life and death decision.

Jonathan lifted an ore canister and started toward the trees, his boots cutting deep tracks in the soil. Trip picked up the other one and hurried to catch up with him. 

So, TPol realized, Captain Archer hadn’t assigned himself this mission. He was invited along by his Chief Engineer.

We really must consider the advisability of a captain going on landing details…

Still, it had been a long time since he smiled that way or walked with that relaxed spring in his step.

Now they were walking into the mine’s dusty entranceway and settling at the battered old table. TPol experienced, without intruding into details, a mellow time of unhurried talk and strong smelling coffee pulled from the captain’s pack then passed back and forth. There were tangy golden apples- how she had enjoyed those back when she lived at the Vulcan compound in San Francisco- eaten slowly, along with dark slices of bread wrapped around romaine lettuce and- she frowned in distaste- the meat from a large, winged fowl called a turkey. Trip pulled the phase-blade case from his pack and made a leisurely examination of its contents between bites of an extremely sweet concoction the captain referred to as “the best carrot cake this side of Mars Colony”. All the while, a scanner Trip had unclipped from his belt lay beside them, flashing a series of interference fuzzed schematics of ore deposits. After what seemed like several minutes, though TPol knew it was only instants, they gathered their supplies and started into the tunnel.   
It was so familiar. There were the lantern hooks, side rooms and branching tunnels, one blocked by an ore cart, another half obscured behind a tumble of rocks. Meanwhile the scanner flashed bright announcements of five separate ore signatures scattered in several directions. The one that Trip kept referring back to was somewhere comparatively nearby, beyond a leftward angling tunnel. 

It was this tunnel, though it lost its familiarity as they reached the place where she now knelt. Back then there was no tumbled pack, no scatter of tools, no dented helmet and no partial cave in with Trip half-buried in the dirt beneath her hands.

TPol shuddered. Under her touch, Trip groaned. For a moment as the link between them faltered, it was as though she had experienced the same space in two different bodies and in two different times.

‘t’sall right, TPol… Keep going.

Was that Trip within the meld or had he spoken aloud? 

I’m… still with you, TPol. All this… makes sense to me. Kind of like… remembering.

Despite the strangeness, he had allowed himself to trust the link and her ability to carry them forward toward Captain Archer. Didn’t he realize that she was proceeding not from knowledge but from untested instinct? 

It’s the only chance.

She would proceed as best she could. Whatever the future consequences were, she would accept responsibility for them. She must gather her reserves and show herself the same confidence he had in her. She would leave this present behind and move onward into the future of Trip’s past.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

 

Her hand remained gentle but firm on the side of his face. Within the meld, they followed the captain down the tunnel. It was older here and much less refined. The lantern hooks came at wider intervals. Striated limestone, compacted earth, flecks of mica and crystalline quartz created odd shadows and reflections as the scanner washed magenta, yellow or green light across the stones. Scatters of fallen dirt and rocks made the going narrow enough at times that they had to juggle the canisters while using the wall for balance. Every few yards, both Trip and the captain used their scanner to record the coordinates as per standard procedure. 

The tunnel roof grew higher. The ground sloped more sharply downward. Loose rocks scuttled into darkness as a boot connected with them. There was the occasional sound of tiny scrabbling feet, the flick of long tails and the high pitched protests of rodents caught in the unexpected glare of head lamps. The air grew increasingly damp and there was the distant patter of dripping water.

Trip’s breath caught as they stepped from the close confines of the tunnel into a huge, subterranean room. “I thought this might be what the sensors were picking up! This mine was built around a pre-existing cave!” 

The captain’s smile flashed again as his gaze swept over columns, spires and pinnacles, glimmering in clear gem tones, purple, rose, yellow and blue. After a long moment, during which neither of them made any move to check the scanners, Trip let out a low, appreciative whistle. 

“I haven’t seen anything like this since I was maybe eight or ten. Something like that. We took a family vacation up to Florida Caverns Park, just outside this little town called Marianna-”

She felt a wince, then a fleeting question- Wonder if its still there? -before Trip deliberately threw himself back into the flow of words and remembered delight. 

“It was a series of dry caves. Room after room like this. All those stalactites hanging down like icicles and huge stalagmites pointing up from the floor. I said that they looked like dinosaur teeth. Lizzie told me that if all the lights that were strung along the ceiling went out, those teeth were all ready to snap! right together and eat me up. Gave me nightmares for a week! Sisters!” Sweet reminiscence eased the bitterness of grief. “You don’t know what you missed, being an only child!”

Jonathan laughed, a quiet, easy sound in the motionless space, and one even more foreign than that smile. 

It was interesting that, during these private moments, Trip often thought of him as Jonathan, his long time friend, rather than as his captain, though she’d never heard him use the name any more than she had had herd the captain refer to the engineer as “Charles”. She herself had never thought of Trip as “Charles” either, after her first few weeks aboard Enterprise. 

Jonathan’s gaze focused on a tapering pinkish stalactite poised at the highest point in the domed ceiling. “It might have been fun to have siblings growing up- at least some of the time,” he said now. “But I didn’t miss out on the chance to see a lot of caves. My Dad loved the skies, loved to fly anything with wings or thrusters, but he also loved all kinds of exploration.” He let out a long, satisfied sigh. “He wanted me to have as many adventures as possible. To give me a chance to dream big… We’d go spelunking on our own to what caves we could, or go places they had public tours. We went to Carlsbad, to Talking Rocks and a lava tube cave in Oregon I don’t remember the name of and we’d learn how the formations were created.”

They were companionable in their silence for several seconds before Jonathan continued. “It caught my imagination, that water dripping down year after year, building those shapes out of rock residue. All the while it was carving away at the same rock, digging underground rivers and scooping out spaces for subterranean lakes. But-” He quirked a questioning brow Trip’s way. “You called yours ‘dry’ caves.”

“Well, yeah. Since we lived on a peninsula, most caves in Florida opened onto the Gulf Coast or the Atlantic.” Trip paused to run a sweep of their surroundings before he went on. “A lot of the caves were either completely underwater or subject to the pull of the moon, affected by the neap and ebb tides. Anyway, they weren’t safe for exploration, except by experienced, certified spelunkers. The park we visited had the only ones in the area that were open to the public. I wanted to go back there again the next year, but our parents opted for Disney Universe.”

That wince of recollection came again, brief and fleeting before Trip stepped ahead of the captain into the high ceilinged room. “Don’t think I saw another cave until we checked out Jarrin Ibbray Caverns in the Sirius B system. They didn’t hold a candle to this. Or-” his laugh was quick, only a little forced, as he glanced over his shoulder and tapped his helmet. “-a lamp!” 

Jonathan nodded. “Kalandarah Prime has some fine caves, too. I had a chance to visit them on my last mission before Enterprise. You might want to…” He stepped forward to watch Trip’s scanner display as he played it over a triple column of stalagmites. The colors flickered, faded within the meld as another awareness was superimposed over the flow of images. It had been there before the joining.

Uneasiness. 

It was faint, only a ripple. But it must not be allowed to permeate the meld, divert Trip’s attention or alter his perceptions of what had happened. 

Concentrate. Must concentrate. 

How long now had they been sharing minds? Probably it was no more than moments, but she had never been trained in the ways of sustaining a meld. She did not plan on getting it, wouldn’t wish to indulge herself with such illogical, reprehensible behavior. But admittedly right now it would have been helpful.

This was illogical. Wasting attention on condemning an act she was already committing. She must focus on continuing to commit it. 

If she were a trained melder, would she find this endeavor so fatiguing?   
Neither Jonathan nor Trip had sensed danger yet. Since she could not assist them by preventing it, she must not even dwell on her knowledge of its existence.

Concentrate… Focus on the captain’s voice, picking up again in mid-sentence. 

“are really something. You may want to check them out on your next shore leave.” He glanced at Trip, who put down his empty canister, adjusted the scanner and made another careful pass over the stalagmites. “Got something?”

“Yeah. Look, Captain! Do you see those blue flecks?”

Jonathan leaned forward. “Some compound of quartz.”

“Yeah. That yellow to your left? Citrine. The purple beyond it? Amethyst. Beautiful but basically inert. This blue one here though? That’s Cyrulinite. You don’t find it at all on Earth. A few handfuls of crystals like this, refined, then subjected to pressure and heat would be enough to power our engines for a month. Might make a nice piece of jewelry too.”

Jonathan gestured to Trip’s pack. “Shall we get started?” 

“Not here. The concentration’s higher a little further on.” Trip gestured deeper into the cave, where bluish glints from the rock formations were obvious in the lights from their helmets, even without the scanner readout. “We picked up three or four other energy signatures from Enterprise that we could use, but I’m thinking we’ll go with this. The others had a higher energy yield per milligram than Cyrulinite, but they’re more dispersed, a lot more volatile and would take a lot longer to extract and-” Trip shrugged, then chuckled. “Pretty as this place is, something about it is starting to give me the shivers. Come on. I think we’re about to strike the mother lode.” 

She could feel Trip’s excitement, the lightness in his step, the comradeship between the two old friends as they descended a narrow passageway near the wall of the cave. Trip kept his scanner trained toward a cluster of short low hanging stalactites. They were not flecked but shone an almost entirely clear, translucent blue.

“Seems a shame to disturb something like that,” said a voice.

Something was odd here. Wrong. 

Each word was distinct, but it was impossible to tell which of the two well known voices had spoken or who replied. “It looks like the formations down here have been disrupted …” 

Even odder was the misty greyness dimming outlines and colors on all sides as they turned to walk away from that ghostly crystalline form that had seemed so very blue only moments ago. 

Deep breath. Calmly now. In. Out.

Were they losing the meld?

Her breathing quickened, grew cautious and shallow until it matched his, breath for breath. The connection between them was there. 

Concussion. As they came closer to the moment of injury, the neural pathways would not retain all their stored information. There could be more gaps like this one. The captain must not disappear any deeper into one of them than he already had.

Tired, so tired.

Was this Trip’s exhaustion or her own?

They were coming out of the grey in a new location. Presumably, it was one further down the path than before. The formations were more jagged here. Many crystals had broken free and lay scattered among chaotic piles of rock against the cave wall. Gouged out gullies ran across the floor as though channels had been carved there. 

Jonathan knelt and raised cupped hands full of broken blue shards. “How much of this can you use as is?” came his familiar voice.

The greyness had receded, but not completely. Movement was slow and dream-like, the area of focus was not as wide nor the colors as bright. A sort of light-headedness remained at the edges of consciousness, somewhat reminiscent of the transporter effect.

Trip crouched beside the captain. “Let’s have a look.” Slipping the pack from his shoulders, he pulled out the sampling case and opened the lid. He pressed levers on its four corners which telescoped the sides upward to more than a foot in height, then reached for the smaller case containing a narrow angle scanner, a pair of safety goggles and a set of fine-beam phaser blades. 

They were talking again, but after the first few moments, their conversation began flickering in and out, rather like that last contact with Ensign Mayweather. 

“… needs… least one facet like this…”

“…looking at density, or size?” 

“…if you’ll hold… I’ll adjust… extract…” 

Then the words faded. The cutting edge of the phaser blade flashed yellow bright for an instant, then it too dimmed.

“That’s it. Hold ‘er steady.”

Tired. They were getting so tired.

“Got it.” 

But there was a soothing sense of companionship in the unhurried voices and the hands moving in intuitive, rhythmic cooperation, something almost hypnotic. It was a different sort of mental melding: that of old friends with a shared project that was interesting to both of them.

Was that Jonathan’s voice weaving through the hum of the blade and the patter of water dripping nearby? “…enough crystals… Keep you out of mischief… Few minutes …will take the scanner and scout ahead…”

There were so many stones to sort, all shimmering, precious, within work-gloved hands before they tumbled into the broad silver mouth of the canister: one and another and another in a steady, lulling rhythm. 

Or was it fatigue creating this new fascination with repetition? Must not… become… hypnotized by it…

“…making good time. The canister is half full…”

There was something about that canister. Concentrate. 

It was filled without incident and carried almost to the mine’s entrance before whoever took it started back. There was an interval of safety here for re-gathering strength and impartial observation, almost a form of self-training. Later, she might consider it an indulgence, part of her fascination with emotions, as dangerous to her future as the Trellium-D had been. Still, she could not afford the fatigue encroaching on the edges of her consciousness.

Breathe steady as a heartbeat. Breathe deep and tidal. Neap and ebb. In and out. Breathe and observe.   
Trip’s skilled wielding of the blade was creating his own form of peaceful meditation. Jonathan’s movements were relaxed, unhurried, as he made short forays among the stone formations, engaging in a bit of long-yearned for exploration. 

It was his voice that brought the moment back into focus. “Hey, Trip? Phase one is done. This canister’s full.”

“Hmm?” Trip angled the blade, tried to narrow the cutting beam another five per cent. The dial kept slipping beneath his fingers. Maybe he should shed these old work gloves. They were getting so wet and tacky. Guess somebody forgot to fix the roof. No, he’d leave them for now since the position was almost, almost right for getting that last crystal near the rear of the formation.

“Hey, Trip?” Jonathan chuckled as he dropped one last crystal into the canister, then locked the cover down.

“Hmm?” Maybe he’d leave the large one that camouflaged the worst of the damage along this part of the wall. What had caused that, anyway? It hadn’t looked like this where they entered the cave, but here it was pretty extensive and from what he could tell, was even more so further along. It’d be kind of interesting, if they had time, to do a little investigating into what might have happened…

“Planet to Commander Tucker! Trip, I’m taking this canister back to the exit. With all the samples you’ve put in that case, we’d have a hard time getting it and both canisters in one trip, especially through those narrow spots. I’ll use the opportunity to contact the ship.” He checked his chronometer. “Hoshi will be expecting to hear from us in the next half an hour or so. Meantime, you can keep right on chiseling merrily away down here.” 

“Okay, Captain.” Trip didn’t look up, but continued to work, curling his fingers around a Cyrulinite crystal as it fell into his hand. 

Though TPol knew the attempt to contact the ship had failed, that might have been interference from the ore’s emanations. The captain’s leaving triggered no alarms within Trip’s memory. 

“What do you think of my taking your pack on ahead as well? You’re never going to get that sample case back in there. One less thing to juggle later?”

At last Trip looked up, dropped the crystal into the canister, clicked off the blade and waved it in the captain’s direction. “Sure. As long as I can fit this thing into yours when I’m done with it, I’m all for the idea. I lugged so much measuring and excavating equipment along we didn’t need once we caught on to these veins of Cyrulinite, I don’t think I could get a toothpick in there without bursting the seams. The less bulk we got to deal with when we haul out the rest of this stuff, the better.”

“I’ll meet you back here in a few minutes.” Jonathan lifted the hefty pack, slung it across his shoulders and reached for the canister.

“By the way, Captain!,” Trip said with a grin. “Don’t think I don’t remember what you’re carrying away with you! Make sure and leave a little of that coffee for me, too!”

“Right you are!” Jonathan shrugged the pack into a more comfortable position and tugged his collar out from under one of the straps. Picking up the canister in both arms, he staggered a step or two as he adjusted its balance, then turned and made his way back up the path. Trip looked after him until he was no more than a speck of helmet light reflecting smaller and smaller against the cave walls.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

 

So, it was Jonathan who had gotten the canister to the spot near the entrance. What if he had disappeared on his way back to the cave and Trip remembered nothing because, in all actuality, that was what he knew. 

Then this meld had been a misdirection of minutes that could have been given to a direct search for the captain or the medical aid for Commander Tucker. So much useless effort had been expended to find only that they were somewhere in the grey again. 

There was a sense that her hands- rather, that their hands- hers and Trip’s- were wielding the blade again, though she could no longer name the color of its beam or the frequency and dimensions of its setting. In alternating sequences of motion, their fingers gathered rocks, some smooth with sharp edges and all probably with assigned color names and mineral classifications, then dropping them into a wide mouthed container. Were they called Cy- Cyrul-something? 

So grey. Nothing but grey and a dripping coldness. There was a break in the rhythm as an impatient hand raised, swatted at the drip. With dreamlike slowness, she and Trip got to their feet. “How?” He muttered. “Can that water miss the helmet and go right for the back of my neck!”

Were they walking? Going to a new location, maybe? The movements were so slow, it was hard to know what they were doing, except that Trip was groaning in her head. 

No, not Trip. That was her own groaning she heard. 

So, so tired…

Was she tormenting both of them for no purpose? Sifting for nothing through Trip’s damaged memories?

“…and I did save you a cup!” Jonathan was standing over them, grinning and holding out the tall metal cylinder of coffee as he gazed at the canister. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

How long had he been gone? 

No idea.

How long had he been back?

Trip deactivated the blade and set it down. When had its light begun to shine out of the grey again? 

Events were certainly becoming less cohesive. 

Trip reached for the cylinder, unscrewed the top, took a deep, savoring inhalation of an aroma that made TPol’s nose wrinkle. She distracted herself from the bitter taste of the brew by watching Jonathan crouch to examine the contents of the sample case. He appeared undamaged and unconcerned by anything in the immediate surroundings. There was still no clue as to what the danger would be.

“You call this a cup!” Trip said, a note of surprise rising in his voice. “I’d call it two or three swallows! You drank all that coffee and you didn’t blast off to the ship without needing the shuttle-pod?”

Jonathan looked up from the sample case. “No. I didn’t touch yours! I figured we could use it on the way back. This was what was left in my pack. You want me to lock these down yet?”

“Yeah, thanks. The samples are done. I’ll get these last few crystals and we can head out.” Trip tipped back the cylinder for a last bitter black swallow, screwed the lid on and passed it to the captain. “Did you reach the ship?”

“Too much interference.” Jonathan locked down the lid on the sample case with an audible click, then rose and moving to his own pack, slid the coffee cylinder inside. “We can try them from the shuttle-pod when we get there. Probably have better results.”

Trip picked up the blade. “Give me five minutes, Captain.”

“No problem. Do what you need.” Jonathan swung the pack over his shoulder. “I’ll make one more quick survey here. The mineral signature changes in a kilometer or so. Our science officer has been running a comparative analysis of planets of this general make-up. She says it may come in handy as a basis for future route planning in this sector.” 

Trip grinned as a warm wave of secret pleasure washed over him. It had something to do with saying her name and the happy shape it would make on his lips. It brought an association with amazing gentleness combined with the fun of sharp witted conversations and memories of a long, sweet night. It was as odd and disconcerting an awareness as when she’d seen herself through his eyes. 

“Somehow,” Trip watched Jonathan activate his scanner. “I just never quite pictured TPol using the word ‘handy’.” 

“Well, something to that effect,” Jonathan flashed a quick grin that said quite a bit about what he’d seen in Trip’s expression. Then he was turning and making his way down the winding path.

Memory clicked into crystal-sharp focus. Adrenaline surged. Now! Now! It’s going to be now-!


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

 

There was no way to signal the earlier Trip to leave his work, no way to hurry after the captain, to call his name, shout a warning or tell him to stop, hey, wait a minute.

Stay off the plateau! The stones are gone, the ground has-

The blade dipped, angled, bit rock with incredible slowness before finally deactivating. Trip took his time studying four translucent stones shimmering blue on blue as they lay on the cave’s rocky floor. He scooped them up, then tipped his hand over the canister. One, two, three dropped in. After more long seconds of consideration, he pocketed the last one. Then the blade was turned over and over again, rubbed free of a thin sheen of water droplets and gritty residue from minute flying rock fragments and locked into position inside its carrying case, with the safety goggles wiped and wiped and wiped clean before being secured some slow time later.

How, when they needed to hurry, could each movement take so long if its details were growing sparse and misty?

Of course, TPol realized. This was only a perception of how long these actions had taken. It was no voyage back to another time, only a view of it and a sketchy one at that. Events could not be changed, only experienced.

Still holding the blade’s small case, Trip looked around for the captain’s backpack. It was gone. What was it the captain had done with it? 

There was another empty grey flicker, then another and another. For TPol it was reminiscent of the interference half obscuring Reed’s life sign and the spoken syllables of Mayweather’s transmission. But those gaps had not drawn her muscles tight with urgency as these flickers did.

We can’t lose focus now- Concussion, yes, we understand we can’t get what has been erased, but this is the moment we need. Here. Now!

The captain had picked up the pack and half slung it across his shoulder after stashing the coffee container inside. Then he had…? He had started down the path!

It was getting so grey, like a sticky dull film overlaying everything. The colors had dimmed still further, blurring fine details half out of existence, but Trip was up and moving. Leaving the canister behind somewhere, he ambled along the downward path, dividing his gaze between the formations he passed and the beam from the captain’s helmet as it twinkled in and out among stalagmites. A moment later it came into the open again, then stopped.

“Hey, Captain!” he called through the nearby prattling of water over stone, more a casual announcement of his approach than an attempt to draw Jonathan’s attention. No alarm sounded in his voice as he reached the point where the path curved down to a wide and level plateau. There was no urgency in his thoughts, only a series of wishes. 

He was ready to pack his case, get the ores onto the shuttle-pod, then to sit back and relax on board with a nice long cup of coffee from the bottle in his pack. He wanted o reach the ship, grab a quick bite at the mess hall, get out of these increasingly soggy clothes and have a long, hot shower before writing his report on this mission and getting to bed. Though ship’s chronometers did not correlate with the late night time in this region of the planet and this exploration had been a much needed change of pace, not to mention a good bit of fun, he was till glad he didn’t have to work the day shift tomorrow.

Jonathan glanced over his shoulder and pointed with his scanner to an outcropping above his head. “Come look at this! There was something like it in the sample case, but this has crystalline elements like your Cyrulinite, which-” 

“Captain!” Trip cut in. 

All thoughts of dry clothes and a visit to the mess hall were gone. 

“Wait!” Still, his voice remained steady. It held none of the startled urgency that had adrenaline pumping loud in his veins. “Stay right there! Don’t move.”

Jonathan had no way of seeing what a stray beam from Trip’s head lamp registered, what he himself would not have seen if he’d been walking half a meter further to his right. As wide and level as the plateau appeared, as it curved downward and to the left, the ground was undercut by a huge, unknown force that had sheared away several large supporting stones. 

Jonathan froze. Waited, poised and motionless. “Okay! Don’t move. Got it. Tell me what you see.”

“The ground you’re on has been compromised from below. Must be the concentrated emanations from the ore that’s kept the scanner from picking it up. It looks unstable enough I’m not sure it’ll hold your weight if you…”

“Move toward the edge? Good thing I plan to stay put right here for the time being.”

“Yeah, real good thing.” Trip studied the space separating them and saw that, without doing more than turning his head, Jonathan was making the same type of check. 

The unease, the looming uncertainty, was stirring again. 

Is there nothing to do within the meld but observe what had been done and weigh options? Did we start a plan? 

Yeah, but…

With these images growing less distinct and the gaps between them more frequent, can we learn what it was?

Yeah. But it’s not going to work.

Then there is nothing for us to do but wait and watch.  
No more than fifteen meters lay between Trip and the captain. Stalagmites stood erect and austere, lining the path on both sides for half that distance. Beyond that, the cave wall stretched high on the right, while the trail’s left side was bordered by only a few large, smoothly eroded stones. These grew smaller and further apart as the path broadened out to a deceptively solid plateau. Then the stones themselves were gone, leaving a barren ledge with sharp-edged shadows down the steep slope below it, marking gouged out places before disappearing into darkness.

“I’m going to take off this pack,” said Jonathan. “Then toss you the rappelling lines.”

Trip was nodding. “Understood!”

There was nothing casual in Jonathan’s movements now. They were slow, deliberate, as he positioned himself close to a broad-based stalagmite, then widened his stance, distributing his weight as much as possible across the rocky floor. “This should only take me a minute here…”

Yes, the plan is clear and straight from the training manual for situations involving narrow ledges, slippery surfaces or steep slopes. Without benefit of hindsight, it would seem an excessively cautious endeavor. 

One of the meld’s early images brought a flash of relief. TPol could see the coil of rappelling line and accompanying stakes in Jonathan’s half-open pack, along with Chef’s long-ago lunch. Mountain climbers used the equipment to scale rock walls. The hard-nosed stakes could be pounded into or between stones to secure a position. 

The captain would toss one end of the rappelling line to Trip, then form a harness for himself with the other. Meanwhile, Trip would secure his end of the line around a boulder or stalagmites. By taking in slack with each of Jonathan’s steps, the hazard would be reduced. As long as the captain remained near the wall, there was little likelihood of risk, but… 

That’s what should have happened, but we’re here in this tunnel, while he’s still in danger.

The vision of that line, that pack and even that lunch was so much clearer, brighter and steadier than anything the meld had shown in how long? The raveled threads of Trip’s memory were growing so thin now.

Captain…? Captain…? There had been so much urgency echoing in that call…

Concentrate. Breathe, as slow and steady as we can to ease the pull on cracked ribs. In, out. Shallow as it needs to be for us to stay together. Our breaths are one. Minds are one. We will remember. We know it’s hard, sorting it out amid so much flickering grey. We will remember, deep as we can. Heartbeats are one. Memories are one… 

Trip was heading down the path, moving a careful-footed yard, then two, three, four as he sought a sturdy formation to secure the rappelling line. This cave had changed from a place of pleasure and intrigue to one that almost growled with low and ominous menace. Not taking his eyes off Jonathan, he lay his blade kit in the bowl formed by a broken off stalagmite. Another step and he was positioning himself and gauging the angle from which the captain’s throw would come. Keeping one hand on the stalagmite, Jonathan dropped to a crouch and began to shrug out of the pack. 

From below, the growl deepened, became a rumble, vibrating up through Trip’s boots.

Had the captain stopped moving and tipped his head to listen? What was that sound? Trip should know, should recognize what it was beyond that it was loud and growing louder. It had a name. Had to have a name! He’d known what it was the first time, hadn’t he? The word for it was so close he could almost taste its name.

Jonathan had shrugged free of the pack and set it on the ground at his feet, then began fumbling it open to pull something free. Trip caught a glimpse of coiled line. 

“Ready, Trip?” His voice was almost lost as the rumble grew to a roar. The shudder became a lurch, that swelled to a crack loud enough to fill the cavern.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

 

Jonathan had only enough time to loop an arm around the stalagmite as the undercut ground began to fall away. He staggered, grabbed the massive rock formation with his other arm, hugged himself hard against it and clung. The pack, with its length of rappelling line trailing out behind it tumbled and bounced down a steep slope where a flat surface had been only moments ago. The ring of glittering metallic objects raining from its open mouth was lost in the clatter of rocks pouring down into darkness.

“Captain!” Trip fought for balance then allowed himself a controlled drop to all fours, preparing to launch himself forward as soon as the shuddering ground gave him enough purchase to do so. “Captain!” he called again, looking toward the spot where Jonathan had been. 

Where most of the plateau had been. 

Mustn’t panic, can’t. There’s no room for it. So Okay, let’s go! One hand forward, one knee. Now bring the other hand forward. Careful, remember the training? Scan right, left, up… Other knee forward now. Any sign of the captain yet? 

Trip moved over drunken ground, squinting through clouds of rising dirt and debris. The light! Where was the captain’s light?

It had to be out there somewhere within the deepening greyness, fading, disappearing into dimness. 

No! It’s in here! That light! The captain, the memory, they’re in here. They’ll come! We know it! We feel it on the edge of our mind! We’ve got to trust it! Wait! It’ll come! It has to come!

“Captain?”

Was that a glimmer coming from a rocky ledge that hadn’t existed a minute ago?

“Hey, Captain?”

Trip wasn’t sure if he’d shouted, only that it was faster, safer moving forward on hands and knees, distributing his weight on treacherous ground than scrambling to his feet. 

“Trip!” The word wavered with breathlessness, but it was clear and recognizable. His helmet beam crossed the captain’s, shining up from where he sat on a narrow ledge ten to twelve feet below Trip’s vantage point.

Never been so glad to see a light, to hear a voice! 

Jonathan’s arms still circled the stalagmite. His eyes raised to Trip’s, wide with shock just beginning to give way to amazement. If he hadn’t been setting up to make that toss, hadn’t been holding onto that stalagmite, or was already making his way across that plateau when the undercutting gave way… 

Trip shuddered, then drew a deep breath and shook it off. “You okay down there, Captain?” 

“Well, I’m not buying a ticket for another ride like that any time soon!” Jonathan’s voice had lost some of its breathless quality as he looked around and kept his grasp on the stalagmite. “I might say something different tomorrow when the bruises wake up, but I think I’m okay.” 

In Trip’s opinion, he’d be more okay if that ledge still continued to where the path had been so Jonathan could make his way back up to safety or if the drop was shorter so Trip could inch forward on his stomach, reach down a hand to pull him up. And if that noise rumbling down below would shut up, then they’d both be a whole lot more okay.

Within the meld, the uneasiness was still building. 

“Gonna get you outta there, Captain!” 

Despite the gravity of the situation, there was that old, once familiar note of humor in Jonathan’s voice. “As the captain, I can really get behind that plan!”

Trip glanced around. His helmet’s beam flitted over jagged walls and broken rocks, At least there was no sign that the newly exposed ground had been undercut. But there was no pack now, no rappelling line. Not even the damn coffee. All Trip could see was the light from his head lamp gliding across the steep drop beneath Jonathan’s ledge, leading to a tiny, glistening reflection below. There was something about it he didn’t much like, that vibrated a note of warning all through him before it flickered toward grey, then vanished like it had never existed. 

But we saw it! Knew what the threat was. What it is. But- hey, did we tell the captain what we saw, or tell him to look? If we did that, he might say something about what it is! Name it, Captain, name it! Because if we knew the danger before, we can’t find it, we don’t remember! 

The uneasiness was giving way to heart racing desperation.

Easy. Breathe easy. Slower. A bit deeper if we can. That’s it. Good. What did we say to the captain next?

Said? We said? Think we said… 

“Be right back, Captain.” Trip was rising, turning, then looking back to shout. “Gotta get-”

Greyness. We must listen beyond the spreading greyness! 

“-my pack! There’s another set of lines in my pack!”

That’s it! That’s what we said!  
There was a flicker of bright awareness in the mist. 

We are running with a purpose. 

There was an impression of the head lamp’s beam throwing huge, dinosaur teeth shadows on the passing walls before everything faded as Trip’s footsteps carried them onward into the grey.

Another brief awareness showed that Trip was pounding up the tunnel.

Get the pack… It’s in the pack! 

A sound was rising back in the cave, nameless white noise growing loud, louder still, then fading. 

Rodents squealed and ran, scrabble-footed beside them through the dimness. Long, long tails flicked taunting tips across hurrying legs as the ground grew steeper. Dirt and stones skittered and shimmied underfoot as the grey tried to swallow everything except the sound of panting- in, out, in- and the drumming of heartbeats. 

Was that a glint ahead? A pale glimmer out of the mist? Had it become a true reflection growing bright, then brighter in the light of the head lamp? 

See it there, with a flash of color? 

Yes! It was real. It was the pack! 

Great, Captain, I got it! Over shoulder and… Go!

Trip was up again, staggering a little and panting as he turned back down the tunnel, but almost smiling as he ran. 

It’s gonna be all right! Hey, Captain, I’m coming! 

The sound of deep rumbling swelled around him, coming from above, below and ahead! It was more than white noise.

Debris was coming from the tunnel’s roof, first only a trickle, then a prattle, then a stream! Dirt and rocks poured across the floor, covering the path! 

Mustn’t get caught in this… 

Trip dodged to the right. 

Whew! Close one there! Way too close for comfort! 

Piles of dirt and rock grew larger every second! He estimated the distance and leaped.

Gonna make it! 

Fah whoomp!

One of the backpack straps was snagging.

Damn! Who the hell decided to put a lantern hook right there? 

With the ripping of fabric, the backpack jerked free, falling away behind in a clatter of metal on stone as tools flew and scattered! 

Gotta turn back. Got to get to the pack- 

Trip crouched, scrabbling in the dirt.

Don’t need the coffee. Or the Ballpien hammer. Where’s the rappelling line? Not the sandwich container. Rock pick? Oh, come on, gimmee a break here! Field ration pack. One extra glove. No. No. No. Ph gage. No! 

But there it was, coiled loops of rappelling line with adhered package of stakes.

Yeah! Bingo! Got what we need! Leave the rest! 

Scrambling to his feet, Trip turned and began to run. 

On my way Captain! Hang in there! I’m coming…

And then a shout of shock and pain swelled through her mind and TPol was hurtling backward out of the meld. But the echoes reverberated through her head, through her memory, stretching beyond the mere two or three seconds when everything had changed. 

Trip was skidding, sliding over a large, smooth rock as it rolled under his foot, then falling, arms out-flung as his boot caught. Something twisted, tugged, then cracked under the force of his momentum before giving way beneath him. 

Pain! Oh, hell! Hurts! Hurts! 

And still he fell, tumbling sideways a forever way down to rubble strewn ground. 

Real hard ground! Oh, Mamma, it’s so hard! Hurts! Ribs- Mamma, ribs. Like falling off the roof again! Oh, my side, my leg, my captain-!

And overhead, rocks keep raining down. 

Got to move! Get… outta… here… before… I’m… buried! Can’t… quite… catch my breath! Oh, damn! Leg trapped… Hurts to… breathe. Gotta… get an arm up… protect my face… 

Wah-wah-wah-wwang!

Helmet ringing, head ringing… Helmet flying free, clatter, clang… over the floor…! 

Lamp flickering… Oh, my head, my head… 

Blood running hot and sticky wet… 

Can’t move- can’t get free… 

But I’m supposed to be… 

Be what? 

Going…? Somewhere. Gotta do… what? 

God, I’m so dizzy. Could puke… No! Hurts way too much to puke. Head keeps spinning. Round… round… Grey, greyer. Gotta lie back… Catch my breath… a second, Captain. But I’ll be right there to do…

Whatever… 

I’m supposed to do… Okay, Captain? Do you…? Can… you…? Hear…? Me…? 

Lamp… going out… 

Maybe not lamp… Maybe me, going out… So grey… Dark… 

Captain…?

Captain…?

Captain…


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

 

It took more effort than she would ever have estimated for TPol to sit up, then get shaking hands and knees under her and crawl back to where Trip lay, what?- two, three, four feet away? It didn’t matter. It was a long, long distance. She was too spent to do more than wonder at the amount of force a mental melding could exert on the nervous system in order to fling her back, several feet like that. 

The tunnel wavered around her, still spinning with Trip’s grey mist. She closed her eyes and shook her head in an attempt to clear it. For a moment, she sat, at last giving in to that long ago impulse to hug her arms tight across her chest as she shivered in the aftermath of their combined efforts. Would it end the sense that some vital connection had been cut and was, like blood, draining out of her? Had she ever been so off-balance or perceived herself to be so small and lost in the void of her own consciousness?

She let out a long, shuddering sigh. All the desperation that had summoned her, then the immense exertion of this connection with Trip’s mind which had her huddled here, reeling, still left the captain out there somewhere. He was waiting for the rappelling line and the stakes that would allow him to climb free of some oncoming danger.

At least, she knew how to find him. Even if Trip’s recording of the path he and the captain took to the cave was damaged, she had his memories of the journey to follow.   
TPol closed her eyes and drew a deep, summoning breath in momentary meditation as she searched inside herself for strength and focus. She would retrace the path to the cave and to Captain Archer. But first, she must see to Trip.

His eyes were half open, but he made no move at her approach. Had he realized she had been hurtled away and that she was working her slow, shaken way back toward him? Or had he been flung deeper into the grey? 

She lifted a hand through countless g-forces to feel for his carotid pulse. How much of his reserve of strength and consciousness had he spent sustaining his half of the meld? 

Someone with training would know that! And would have known how to ease them out of the meld’s effects, without that terrible mental and physical jolt of separation. 

“I’m sorry, Commander,” she said, fingers tracing the line of his jaw, though it was unlikely he’d want her apology. 

“’t’sall right, TPol, keep going.” he’d said, trusting her and that their meld would help provide vital information. 

And it had worked. She now knew what Captain Archer needed as well as what Trip wanted her to do about it. 

But what did Trip need?

Human anatomy was so similar, yet so different than her own. He could have told her at least some part of what he needed now if they were still linked. 

An instant ago, we knew each other’s heartbeat, each other’s thoughts as fast as we could think them. We were closer than I have ever been to anybody. We were… we. Now I’m only… I. And I am… so alone that it aches. So unsure of what I know about anything right now… 

There was no time to become sure, but only to act to the utmost of her ability. Jonathan was waiting. Trip was waiting. 

She followed the path her fingers seemed to be taking without conscious thought and located Trip’s carotid pulse. 

It was fast and thready, his breathing still shallow. Whether that was from cracked ribs- (oh, my ribs, Mamma! Like falling off the roof again!-) or the onset of shock, she was uncertain. The ribs she could do nothing about, but shock? She ran the checklist for humans she had studied when she was assigned to serve aboard Enterprise. 

Skin, cool and clammy? Yes. Glassy stare? Yes. And in those frantic, fading moments after the concussion, he’d thought about being so dizzy he could… 

“Puke” was not the word she would have chosen, but nausea was also sometimes a symptom of shock.

What she must do was keep him quiet, his head down, feet up or in this case, when raising the feet was impossible, keep him flat, keep him still and especially keep him warm. 

It was only after she began to fumble off her backpack, that she saw the standard lightweight, thermal blanket that had fallen free of his. Her hands still trembled with fatigue as she picked it up and began to unfold it.

“Commander,” she said. “Trip? Do you hear me?”

“Yeah…” he said after several long seconds of silence. “TPol? Did I tell you… where…? Where to…?”

“To find the captain? Yes, Trip. I know where he is now.” She spread the silvery, heat retaining fabric over his shoulders. “I am going there in a moment to assist him.” She pressed the folds close against his arms to keep as much of the cool subterranean air out as she could. “Meanwhile, you must lie as still as possible until we return.”

“Until… You return…? Got it.” He swallowed, licked dry lips and as he had done before the meld, he struggled for words and breath to continue. “TPol, can you… find…? I’m so… cold! Thirsty. Container… right here… Coffee. Hot coffee. Get… like you said., warm?”

“Commander!” She protested. “You are likely in shock! You may have no hot coffee! Nothing at all to drink right now. Not even water.”

She was pleased to see a brief flicker of stubbornness light his eyes, even as it faded and his brow furrowed. “Water.” He repeated after a moment. “Water.”

“I’m sorry, Trip, but…” she began.

“No!” He interrupted, his features growing taut with determination. Trip had that engineering look again: concentrating, en route somewhere between a problem and its solution. Though there had been little force in the word, it held a ring of authority. “TPol! In the cave… the sound! It was… Water! Heard water… High tide… That lake… Three… Three moons… The captain!” 

“Understood!” TPol nodded. Everything had become abundantly clear. There had been that distant patter in the tunnel and the cold splatter on the back of Trip’s neck as splashing waves found their way in from above, then leaked down through crevices in the stone. The low and distant growl began as the lake’s tide spilled over rocks along the shoreline and spilled into the cave. The piles of debris like the one she knelt beside which were scattered throughout the mine’s tunnels, had been the result of shifts in balance as erosion ate away at artificial structures. And then there had come that last terrible roar, as, under enormous pressure, the high tide surged through a subterranean tunnel and crashed up beneath a plateau it had been carving away at for more years than she could name. 

Tidal caves, Trip had mentioned to Jonathan, were subject to the moon, to the neap and to the ebb.

This planet had three moons, all nearing their fullest phase. 

Even she, native of a desert planet, had heard it, but unlike Trip, who had grown up around tidal waters, she had no context for that sound or its implications.

“You are telling me, Commander, that tidal water is still entering the cavern where the captain is, am I correct?” 

He could not be “Trip” now when the rank title and the sense of duty that went along with it might help him to stay focused. Not only on answering her question, but on remaining still and warm beneath the blanket while she went to find the captain. 

And left him here alone, trapped, with no working communicator and his head lamp broken. 

The squeezing beneath her heart that she had experienced when she first discovered him was back again, a protest against what logic told her she must do.

She hesitated, listening to Trip’s shallow, rapid breathing and staring from him to the mound of rocky debris, the supplies still lying halfway within his backpack and those scattered at her feet, then to the tunnel beyond. 

Control. Emotional control. Focus. 

Was there no further assistance she could give him without other hands to lift, balance and remove stones?

No. Each of them was on their own. Her duty lay in attempting to rescue the captain.

But to take the scanner, turn and leave Trip alone here tugged sharp and hard at whatever it was that lay between him and herself. 

“You’ll have to learn to live with your emotions,” Doctor Phlox had said. 

What did he know? Words! They were so easy to say that it was almost insulting. 

Deal with your emotions! 

When Trip spoke, she could hear the relief in his tone. 

“Right. Cave. Tide… water. Captain… You… Got it.” As she turned to him, she could see that his features had relaxed. The struggle had gone, leaving exhaustion there plain to see along with determination. His next words were faint but there was no mistaking the commander’s tone. “Now take what… you need… in… my stuff and… get going!”

She bent, slipped free of her pack, gathered up the bundled rappelling lines and stakes that had spilled halfway from his, then set them inside. The motion sent the container of coffee which rested beneath them trundling across the floor until it stopped, rocking slightly, against her boot. Almost without thinking she picked that up too and pushed it inside her pack. She reached for his scanner, lying no more than two feet away, still flashing yellow, orange and magenta mineral signatures, then paused as her fingers curled around it.

They had shared pain the meld. His pain had become hers, then become theirs before she cloaked it. This tug beneath her heart was not physical pain but emotional. It was not theirs, not his. The determination in his face said that, whatever his emotions had been during the meld and afterward he was prepared to go on from there even if, for him, that meant waiting here alone. 

And how was it the High council told us, time and time again, that there was nothing to be learned from Humans? 

This pain, this ache of caring was hers. Also it was a distraction she didn’t need, as it had been before. Now, as then, if the feeling itself meant anything at all, neither Trip nor the captain needed her to be distracted.

She picked up Trip’s scanner. Her hands still trembled slightly as she activated the one she had brought with her from Enterprise. She Checked them briefly against each other, cycling Trip’s through two, three, four, of its functions and watched the bright flash of colors and the scroll of numbers. It was working. So, it appeared was the co-ordinate mapping of the mine that would help her reach the captain. 

And it had given her an idea. There was, after all, one more thing she could do here. 

Moving to Trip’s side, she knelt next to him and changed her scanner’s settings to monitor the nitrogen content in the immediate area. She studied the consistent golden yellow glow from that most stable of readings until she was certain the light would shine, clear and steady, then slid the device into the curve of his hand resting just beyond the edge of the blanket. For several seconds she watched the light streaming across the floor, up the closest wall and over his face. “I am leaving this with you, Commander, until the captain and I return. Do you understand?”

His slow blink served as a nod. “You and… Captain… Return… Okay.” He said. She caught that fleeting quirk at the corner of his mouth. “Now… Scram! And…?” Breath failed him for a moment before he added. “Thanks, TPol.”

Rising, TPol turned and shrugged her backpack into place. Checking the scanner’s first coordinate for reference, she slipped through a narrow, debris free opening then watched it broaden out into the tunnel.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

 

Her footsteps were rapid and almost soundless. It was the path Trip and Jonathan had followed, now oddly empty. No captain strode beside her in companionable silence, with the eagerness of exploration lighting his eyes when he glanced her way. There was no sense this time of Trip’s intrigued delight flowing beneath the run of her own thoughts. There was only a low, steady apprehension riding somewhere deep inside her and the half-familiar sloping floor stretching before her. 

She recognized the glints of mica reflecting from the walls, but the scatterings of loose stones and dirt that littered the floor hadn’t been there in Trip’s memory.   
The sense returned that she was traveling through two separate times, Trip’s past and her future. 

Already she could see changes. There was more mica sparkling from the walls. Many spaces were narrower, the curves more sharply angled than she had expected. Were they new rock falls, or had information been lost to trauma or left incomplete because Trip hadn’t registered it as relevant enough back then, to have been retained? 

It could be extremely relevant now. At any moment, another tumble of rocks could alter whatever plans she made, possibly render them impossible without assistance from Enterprise. But without knowing how fast or for how long tidal water from the lake had been streaming into the cave, Captain Archer could not afford that she turn back and wait for that assistance.

Wasn’t it about here that Trip first began to register the faint sound of water dripping? She could hear it herself, though it was no drip now, but a steady spatter- like hard San Francisco rain on ancient cobblestone streets.

The tunnel was getting older here and cruder. The walls were rougher, the descent steeper and the footing less even. A squeaking rodent skittered close beside her, the sound of its tiny footfalls mingling with the patter of water. As it traveled past, back the way she had come, its tail swiped across her leg just above the top of her boot.

“Captain Archer?”

She heard no sound but water as she rounded a curve in the tunnel. It was no longer a patter but a steady stream pouring from a narrow gap in the tall, domed ceiling.

So, this was the cave. The beam of her head lamp seemed to grow smaller as the distances it traveled to catch a wall, a dip in the floor or the shape of a rock grew greater. She gave little more attention to the stone formations than it took to avoid crashing into, tripping over or striking her head on one, though she did recognize the long, pink stalactite Captain Archer had gazed up at with such admiration and the beautiful translucent blue of the one neither he nor Trip had wished to destroy. She was on the right trail.

Or wasn’t she? There was a moment of uncertainty. That   
blue on blue crystal had melted into momentary grey here as the memory trail was obscured. TPol glanced around. Which way had they gone after this? 

“Captain Archer?” she tried again.

Still there was no answer. But only a few yards in front of her, she found an area strewn with broken stalagmites and the gem toned crystalline shards.

And there was Jonathan’s voice, as he knelt, holding up handfuls of that same shimmering blue. “How much of this can you use as is?” Then had come the yellow flash of Trip’s phaser blade and hands sorting sharp edged stones. 

TPol blinked. Just ahead was the place where Jonathan locked down the sample case. She could hear the audible click it had made at almost the same instant that the toe of her boot brushed one of its smooth metal sides. At almost any step now she would find the canister full of Cyrulinite.

“Captain?” 

From out ahead of her and below, came the low, steady tumble of water over rocks. .

There was a subtle leftward curve to the path and, set just beyond it was the canister full of the badly needed mineral fuel that had brought them here. She passed it with little more than a glance.

“Captain Archer?”

Only steps away, in the bowl of a broken stalagmite, Trip’s phaser blade kit lay, gleaming. She must be very close. 

 

Shifting free of her pack, she picked up the smooth metal case and slipped it inside, exchanging it for the coil of rappelling line, which she looped over one shoulder, then clipped to her belt. As she stood, putting the pack back on, then fumbling the package of stakes free of the adherent binding them to the coils, she studied the stretch of ground before her. The light from her head lamp created intersecting shadows of rock formations, gradually changing from a glowing circular shape to an oblong one as it traveled along the descending narrow path and then disappeared over its edge. 

As Trip had done, she dropped into a crouch, then to a crawl, exploring the shape, the steepness and solidity of the ground with each careful movement of a hand, a foot or a knee. Close. Closer. If she needed to start implanting stakes for the rappelling line, this would be a good spot. So would this. Closer. Only a few more careful feet until she could see over the edge.

The sound was different now than what Trip had remembered. It was no mounting growl or rising roar, but the lapping swish and gurgle of waves on stones. 

“Captain Archer?” she called, as she realized there were no more stones beyond the ones her hands circled. 

“Here… TPol! Over here!”

She heard the captain an instant before she caught the glow of his head lamp, down several feet and to her right. 

Never been so glad to see a light, to hear a voice! 

She could not have phrased the thought better herself.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

 

Jonathan’s voice was breathless with exertion. He stared up at her but not from where Trip’s memory had shown her. He no longer half sat, half crouched on a narrow ledge with his arms wrapped tight around a stalagmite and the sound of rushing water far below. 

Jonathan Archer was not the type of person to sit and wait. 

Pulling off his jacket, he had rigged himself a sort of harness, by bracing the body of it against his back, then pulling the sleeves forward under his arms. He had then knotted them securely across his chest. Removing his equipment belt, he had managed to swing that around the stalagmite, hard enough, far enough, that he could catch hold of the other end on the rebound. She couldn’t see from here whether it was with knots equipment clips taken from the belt, he’d connected the ends of the loop through the openings in the jacket’s heavy wrist cuffs, effectively binding himself to the stalagmite. By leaning his back into the harness and pressing hands and knees against the rock formation, he’d begun to rappel his way upward. 

TPol could not repress a shudder only partly related to the chill air of the cavern. 

How far into the rigging process had Jonathan been when the water began to creep across the ledge where he’d waited? How hard had the current tugged at his feet, his ankles, then his legs as he climbed? And how long had he been holding to that rock formation listening for a call coming through the darkness? 

She could see where the pale stone of the wall beyond the stalagmite had gone dark grey and glistening wet, marking the high point of the flood water’s reach. Somewhere, high above, Algieba’s three moons had passed their zeniths and the high tide had begun to ebb. Already the band of darkened stone was several inches wide, but even now the captain was submerged past his waist.

This would not be a question of using stakes and rappelling lines to climb down, then across, a rock wall to reach the captain, then travel back with him to safety. He no longer stood on solid ground. Once he fastened himself to the line, he would have to lower himself into that dark water and allow her to use its tension to guide him across to the wall where she could draw him upward.

Since childhood TPol had been trained to survive in the desert extremes of Vulcan’s Forge, but she had little experience of water, except what she had learned during survival training prior to joining Enterprise.

It was unfortunate Commander Tucker wasn’t here. He would know about water: the subtleties and strengths of its flow, the colors of its depths and shallows. He had lived around it, had understanding of it so deep and instinctive he had retained the sense of its dangerous power even in a semi-conscious state. 

If there had been a way to maintain their link they could have used hid knowledge to lay a workable plan of action.

Control, she warned herself. No room for the distractions of frustration.

Experienced or not, she was engaged in an operation involving water. She would extrapolate from survival training, from other rescues she had been involved in and her own instincts as well as the captain’s. 

The course instructor, the class manual, the virtual simulations had been unanimous.

When attempting a water rescue one must first consider…

“There’s not too much current now.” the captain called to her as if he was running the same survival checklist. “At least… not at the surface. I can’t tell anything… about the undertow.”

Surface currents. Undertow. Concepts made real. 

Slipping the rappelling line from her shoulder, she began uncoiling its length. She estimated the distance of her throw, even as she studied him. There was a breathless quality to his voice. It could be from the strain of maintaining his position, but that wouldn’t explain the slightly drunken slurring of his words.

“Captain, I’m about to throw you a line.” Back crawling several paces, she passed it two, three, four times around the stalagmite that had held the phaser blade kit. Keeping hold of the line, she moved back to the path’s edge.

Something tugged at her memory. It was from the unit on winter survival, but the instructor had said the dangers were not confined to snowy or icy climates. Emersion in cold water could produce slurred speech as a symptom of moderate hypothermia. Water, she’d learned during that class, could drain warmth from living organisms twenty five times faster than air at the same temperature. As it dropped below four degrees Celsius, it could render a person unconscious in as little as fifteen minutes.

The air in the cavern was cool, especially to a Vulcan, but she was certain it had not approached the freezing point. The lake’s tossing tidal waves that she had seen from the hilltop suggested no such cold either, but the exact temperature of the water was unknown, as was the duration of Jonathan’s exposure. How much had he already been affected by stiffness, fatigue or the danger of encroaching sleepiness? 

“Captain!” she called as she pounded a pair of stakes into the ground several feet from the start of the steep downward slope. “I have secured the line. I am about to throw it to you. Can you release that structure you are holding on to so you can catch it?”

“Go ahead. I won’t… know how to answer… unless I try.”

At least he still sounded alert.

He was leaning back into the harness, lifting his hands from the stone and flexing his elbows, wrists and fingers.

She recoiled the line. With the woven metal strands tight in the circle of her hand, she considered distance, angle and trajectory. “Will you be able to hold on?”

“I’m not certain. Hands… Have gone numb.”

Hypothermia. TPol stared at the coils. “I’m going,” she called as she twisted the strands between her long, certain fingers. “To tie this line so that it forms loops.” She held them up for him to see. “I want you to put one hand through each loop. Then wriggle them as far up your arms as you can. I’ve attached the line to rappelling stakes and a stalagmite. When you’re ready-”

TPol’s shudder was involuntary. To be already affected by some degree of hypothermia, then lower oneself into cold, dark water then swim or be towed for several yards, was to take a tremendous risk. But there was no alternative.

“Understood!” Jonathan called back, without hesitation. He twisted, angling his arms and shoulders to catch the line. TPol could see the strain of exertion in his upturned face and the cords standing out on his neck.

“On three, then, Captain.”

“Ready.”

“One-!”

The memory came- Jonathan’s voice echoing through this same cavern. “Coming on three now! One… two… three…! Catch!!” he had called to Trip, not so far from where he now waited.

TPol drew a deep breath and saw the momentary vision of another length of rappelling line uncoiling, flying free on a useless trail into darkness. 

“Two-!”

She took a step back, making one more mental check of thrust, distance, and trajectory, before pivoting and letting her arm fly forward and up. 

“Three!”

The coiled line sprang free of her hand. Then it was sailing, unwinding, growing long, longer, then beginning a slackening arc downward. 

It was flying too far. She could see the angle of its descent. It would fall just beyond the captain. 

Jonathan threw back his head, let himself drop, almost limp, back as far as he could into the body of the harness. He swung an arm upward. Leaned still further back until she became concerned the tension on the harness would prove too great and it would give way, toppling him into the frigid water.

Then one loop snagged on his shoulder and slid backward until the line rested between Jonathan’s head and his upraised arm. He turned his head, tipped it forward and began biting at the line, clenching it between his teeth as he pulled. The loop swung forward, dangling down the front of his chest. One flailing, stiff-fingered hand pawed at the swinging line and missed.

Jonathan shook his head hard to the right, then left. The line bounced, the loop swung.

There was another try, another miss.

All TPol could do was watch and wait. She remembered her moment of helplessness back in the tunnel, waiting for Trip to give her the information that would lead her here and her desire to pace, to shout her fear and frustration.

Control… she murmured to herself. Patience. It was so hard to suppress the frustration, her wish to act, do something to assist when she was so near and, in that instant, so powerless. She willed herself to be still, to observe the motions of Jonathan’s head, the sway of the line and the steadiness of each muscle in her hands as they poised, inches above the line, ready to lift it up, reel it back in, then, if needed to start from the beginning and make another attempt.

Jonathan’s hand snagged the loop then wriggled through. Letting the line drop from his teeth, he maneuvered his other hand through the remaining circle of line. This time it caught more rapidly and with less difficulty, though it seemed to have sapped much of his energy as he let himself sag forward in the harness, forehead resting on the stalagmite.

Understanding the logic of what must happen now did not prevent TPol from another involuntary shudder. “Captain?”

“Yes, TPol…” his voice was muffled against the rock.

“If you are secured within the lines…”

She did not have to say it. Every moment of stillness increased the risk as the water leached away needed warmth and energy. 

He lifted his head and nodded. “Understood.” She could see him setting his shoulders with resolve. “Give me… another three count, all right?” 

She checked the stakes. They were secure. As was the line on her end. “On three then, Captain! One-!”

Jonathan swung an arm around the stalagmite. TPol circled the line between the captain and the nearest stake with both hands.

Jonathan struggled to unclip his belt from the cuffs of his jacket. He rocked forward to give himself more slack. And fumbled with stiff fingers. 

It was almost a minute before TPol saw it fall away and disappear. “Two!” 

Before the count of three, he slipped into the cold, black water. The line between her hands went slack. She pulled, hand over hand, careful and slow until it grew taut. Though his face was lost in shadow, she could see the beam of the captain’s head lamp moving through the water toward her. It painted small trails on the surface that fanned out on either side of him, rippling a little in a slight current. The ripples spread as the light came closer. 

Rising, she looped the growing slack once, twice around the stalagmite, before returning to peer over the path’s edge.

Jonathan was no more than eight or nine feet below, breathing in shuddering gasps, his eyes wide and exhausted beneath the brim of his helmet. 

“Captain, if you can brace the bottoms of your feet against the wall, I can help you rappel up over the rocks.”

He nodded, but it was several seconds before he glanced down at the line, then at the smooth, steep slope in front of him. Was he studying the security of his improvised harness or drifting toward an illusion of warmth and sleep? 

TPol looked at the stakes she had driven into the rocks about two feet apart. Should she create a set of loops for herself so her hands would be free? Then perhaps she could maneuver down, secure the line around his waist and rappel beside or behind him taking as much of his weight as possible while creating leverage for both of them. 

Jonathan shook his head as though to clear it. He looked up, met her gaze and brought his knees toward his chest, letting himself float, suspended, for a moment before his boots connected with the rock wall. 

The line slackened. TPol fed it over first one stake, then the other, creating figure eights back and forth, back and forth, making the line taut again. Jonathan leaned against the tension in it, used it both for traction and leverage as he brought one boot up to break the surface of the water. He pressed the sole of it against the rock as TPol took up another several inches of slack. She repeated the action as he managed another step closer. She snaked the line back and forth, back and forth, keeping it taut. Watching first the captain’s ascent, then the figure eights multiplying beneath her hands, then the captain again. He was close, so close now. One more step, one more length of line. She turned from the stakes to catch one flailing arm as his head appeared over the edge of the drop.

The sound of her heavy breathing mingled with his as she grasped his shoulders and half supported, half dragged him over the barren shelf of rock and several feet onto the path where she sank onto the ground beside him.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

 

“You need,” she said, after a moment for two, three, four long, shaky breaths. “To remove your outer gear.”

He didn’t speak, only nodded his understanding, then lay gasping. She pulled one loop then the other over his stiff, blue-tinged hands, dropped the spent line on the ground and undid the sleeves of the jacket still knotted across his chest. Water poured from the garment as she lifted it away from his back. 

“And the shirt,” She continued. Not waiting for his response, she began unfastening the front of the uniform, watching the usually blue material glisten sodden black as water ran from it in sheets. Again, he nodded, swallowed hard and fought to keep himself from curling forward while she pulled it free.

Swinging away from him, she twisted the fabric three, four, five times between her hands. The most important thing now was to bring up his core temperature. More sheets of cold tidal water pattered onto the stone floor. The chill of it made her hands ache with sudden tiredness. She had no time to wonder what degree of exhaustion Jonathan must be experiencing. Instead, she drew a silver tinted blanket from her pack, like the one she had wrapped around Trip’s shoulders. Folding it into a long roll, she lay it on the ground, reached into the pack again and pulled out a tall metal cylinder. 

“TPol?” Jonathan managed a vague note of surprise between breaths as she unscrewed the top then doused the blanket with half the warm coffee. Its bitter aroma filled the air as she wrung out the fabric with the same quick movements. For an instant, the warmth stung, before the pleasure of the heat began to spread through her fingers.

“Here, lift your arms,” she said, wrapping the blanket lengthwise, once, twice around his chest. Fumbling only slightly, she tucked the free end in at the top and then picked up his shirt. “I want you to put this back on.” 

Not waiting for a response, she lifted the uniform top and began working his icy blue hands into the sleeves without attempting to warm them. Extremities, she remembered, were not the priority with generalized hypothermia. Warm them too quickly and run the risk shock. Certainly that was a bad enough situation on its own, without attempting to treat it in these surroundings. 

“The coffee will cool,” she went on, bending to pull off one boot, then the other and tipping them to let rivulets of water pour out. “But it will stimulate heat production through your core areas. I am sorry there is nothing I can do about the rest of your clothing or footwear.”

He would already know this from his own survival classes, she was certain. Still, the flow of her words as she helped get the boots back on, would give him something to keep his attention on until she could get him moving. It would be easier and safer than letting him drift off even briefly, then attempting to rouse him again. 

Ideally, according to that long ago instructor, the best thing would have been to get him someplace warm, dry and quiet. Since that was not possible, she had created what dryness and warmth she could for him. Now she must get him walking, slow and steady without bringing up his temperature too fast. She would get him back to the relative safety of the tunnel where she could leave him and Trip while she went to find the rest of the search team, and rescue.

It seemed like a tremendous undertaking.

Jonathan watched her as, still talking, she removed her heavy outer jacket. She draped it, cape-like over his shoulders. “The heat from the liquid will be captured between the fabrics of your shirts and held beneath the jacket. It should stimulate your circulation to warm your core more than the blanket alone would have. Will you be able to walk?”

“My feet are pretty numb,” he said, instinctively burrowing into the shelter of her jacket where some of her own warmth still lingered. “But I know I should keep moving. What about you? Will you be all right without this?”

She nodded. “Yes. For now your need is greater than mine. Let’s go.”

It was slow, stiff work getting him to his feet. She put on her pack, then moving close beside him, put one arm around his back, then rested her other hand across his chest in front of his heart. Normally, Vulcans did not engage in casual contact. , but then they usually didn’t engage in mental melding, either. Still, aside from the relief and reluctant pleasure she experienced at the solid, living feel of Jonathan beneath her hands, the logic of the action was clear. This way, we can share our warmth.

“All right, I’m ready.” Jonathan managed through teeth that were beginning to chatter. Tremors began to ripple across his back, to spread beneath her fingers. 

It was a good sign, TPol noted. He would have been in far worse condition if he had been beyond the point of being able to shiver.

“Come then,” she told him. “We have some distance to cover before we have any guarantee of encountering the rest of the search party.”

His breathing was becoming more regular as, with deliberate care, they made their way up the winding path at the edge of the cave. She allowed him a brief pause for rest, though not to sit down, when they reached the ore canister. Standing with his tired weight resting against her side, TPol stared at it with some regret, then wordless, they turned and moved on. That ore was the fuel the landing party had come for. Now, they would be grateful to leave it behind if they could escape this place with their lives. 

“Trip’s sample case…” Jonathan broke the silence a short while later. “It’s smaller than the canister. We should bring it.”

TPol nodded, bent and picked up the case. She juggled it to her left arm and circled Jonathan’s waist with her right. She allowed his arm to drape itself across her shoulder and listened to the rocks soft rattle beneath the metal as they walked.

They were nearing the entrance to the cave, passing the beautiful blue on blue crystal.

She had not heard Trip call since their meld broke. Not for the captain, or for her. Was his need to tell someone of Jonathan’s danger the catalyst for it? Had knowing a rescue was underway ended the need to continue? 

Trip? She explored the space where silent conversation had flowed back and forth between them. But there was nothing, not even a sense of consciousness or the lack of it.

 

A more experienced melder might have known… Perhaps even one with a little more training. With any training at all…

Beside her, Jonathan straightened. She could feel a slight lessening of his weight across her shoulders. The constant shivering had given way to bursts of deep, hard shuddering. He gazed for a moment up at the magnificent pink flecked stalactite hanging high above them. The rate of his breathing was growing closer to human normal now. Most important, for the first time she sensed that he was fully alert to his surroundings. 

“How many people?” he asked. “Are in the search detail?”

“Lieutenant Reed, Ensign Mayweather and myself.”  
“Did you make contact with Commander Tucker?”

“Yes. In one of the tunnels,” she began.

“Did he tell you how to locate me, or did you find me on your own?”

“Commander Tucker,” she hesitated, washed over by an automatic wave of shame at the manner of the telling, no matter how practical and necessary the meld had been. “Told me.”

“He didn’t come with you?”

“No, he was injured retrieving the rappelling equipment. He sent me to find you.”

Jonathan nodded. “It’s strange. I could call it an error in judgment, that I took that pack back with me instead of leaving each of us with a full compliment of gear.” She could hear the exhausted strain in his voice as he tried to speak without breaking the rhythm of their pace. “When I think back on it, that went against half my training. But then it seemed like something I needed to do. Something important.”

“Commander Tucker didn’t see an error in judgment.” Said TPol. “My impression is that he believed taking the pack was an entirely practical suggestion.” 

But it wasn’t responsibility for what had happened that was on Jonathan’s mind.

They covered several steps before he continued. “You know, it was pure luck that Trip spotted something wrong back there. Nothing about the ground’s instability showed up on our scanners.”

“Yes,” TPol agreed. “It was fortunate. The stone was undercut, apparently by erosion. It was hidden by energy signatures emanating from mineral compounds in the area. Trip-” She couldn’t bring herself to use the word “said” with all it implied about spoken conversation. After a moment’s hesitation she continued. “…Commander Tucker believed if he had been walking a foot further to the right, he never would have observed the danger.”

Jonathan nodded. “He and I were putting together a standard rappelling operation to bring me back across the plateau. I don’t think it was my being there that brought it down. Just timing. But if we’d been even a few seconds further into the procedure, that is… If I had been the one holding up my hands to catch his line…”

TPol turned to look at him as the implication of his words became clear. He wouldn’t have been grasping the stalagmite and could have been caught in the landslide. Trip, even if he had the equipment needed to begin a rescue, would have had no time to effect it. The flood had cascaded into the cave only moments after he’d turned to get the pack. Its thunder had been the nameless white noise filling his head as he ran. 

Had it been precognition that caused the captain to take that pack back into the tunnel? Or what humans called “intuition”? 

It was another one of those concepts that, like time-travel, the High Council had declared impossible. But was it? That was a question worth later consideration. For now, beneath her hand, the captain was still having uncontrollable bouts of shivering and Trip’s well-being, like Jonathan’s before it, had become the unknown quantity.

There was little more conversation as they moved up the tunnel. Possibly speech, while maneuvering the steep incline, was proving too much for Jonathan. Or perhaps he was caught up in the wonder of circumstances that had allowed his escape from the flooded cavern. All that TPol was certain of as they skirted the narrow areas where dirt and rocks had fallen, was that much of her adrenaline was long since spent and her footsteps were becoming almost as uneven as the captain’s. 

She had no recollection the tunnel was this long. It seemed steeper than Trip recalled. At least now she was seeing an occasional lantern hook embedded in the wall to encourage them onward. 

Jonathan’s breathing seemed to have steadied. At least it sounded no more labored than her own. The fierce bouts of shivering appeared to be coming less often.

She paused for a deep breath. Concentrate. Wasn’t this where that long-tailed rodent had streaked across her boot? Could this be the spot where Trip first heard the drip of water? She hadn’t heard a drip, but a patter. Now, it was a drip again and…

Jonathan’s hand came out from beneath the cape of her jacket. Caught hers within jittering fingers. When she glanced over at him his eyes, though shadowed deep with exhaustion, as well as by the helmet, were warm with encouragement. “I remember this,” he said. “TPol, I think it’s not far to the main tunnel.” 

They were such tired, kind words.

“Thank you, Captain,” she said, as he burrowed back deeper under the draped cloth.

It was no more than twenty paces before she recognized something he would not. The last tight squeeze where the cascading rocks had blocked most of this part of the tunnel and almost buried Trip. 

Ten paces now and they would come out into the place where she had left him with her scanner shining its golden light in his hand. She could see its glow bouncing off the tunnel wall even before she and Jonathan staggered through the gap in the rocks.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

 

It was an irrational aspect of her growing fatigue that now when she knew the captain was safe at her side, she almost expected to find Trip liberated from the tumble of rocks and debris. He hadn’t been. The one difference she could see was that he had lifted the scanner, so that it lay on his chest, with one hand curled around it.

Jonathan lurched away from TPol’s grasp, then dropped to his knees beside his friend. Once again, a hand emerged from beneath the makeshift cape, circled Trip’s arm with fingers that still jittered at intervals. 

“Trip!” At the lack of response, Jonathan glanced over his shoulder at her. “didn’t tell me…” His words trailed off. 

This was an unforeseen response to those careful word choices she had made on the way here in order to avoid talking about the meld. Semantics carried their own sets of consequences. And so did shame, she decided, seeing the lines of worry form around Jonathan’s tired eyes.

“Would a description have gotten us here any faster?” She asked, moving to Trip’s other side and lowering herself to the ground in careful stages on legs that threatened to buckle. Turning her attention from the captain, she touched Trip’s shoulder and watched to see if his eyes would open. 

They didn’t. “Commander?” She moved her hand to the pulse point in the angle of his jaw. 

Jonathan watched. “You said he told you where I was…” 

“He did. He was semi-conscious. I will tell you…” she began.

Later. 

She would tell him later. He was her captain. He was Trip’s friend. He had a right to know what had happened, especially if her impulse to use the meld had caused Trip any further harm. No matter that he had gone along with the idea and encouraged her when she faltered. She had made the suggestion, assumed the responsibility and…

Had that been movement beneath her hand? The faintest turn of his head? 

“Commander Tucker!” TPol said. The challenging tone had had some effect before. It might again. At least to get his attention long enough to deliver her message. “I want you to open your eyes. I want you to see who’s here with me at this moment.”

Nothing. She exchanged looks with Jonathan.

“Hey, Trip,” said Jonathan. “Can you hear me?”

There was an echo in her head. Captain… Can you…? Over the hill, that word, that call had beckoned. Then along the trail and into the mine, how long ago now? 

“Captain?” 

That was no echo. Trip’s eyes were open. 

“I’m here, Trip.”

Several seconds passed. Trip blinked, then worked to focus a wavering gaze that in turn filled with hope, disbelief, amazement and at last, relief. His smile was small, tired, little more than that quirk at the corner of his mouth, but his entire face was lit with it. “Good to see you… Captain. Even if… you look… terrible!”

Above the makeshift cape of her jacket, Jonathan’s shadowed, exhausted face split with that rare and total smile. “Haven’t seen a mirror lately, have you?”

TPol looked from one to the other as their gaze held for several seconds. What was it about human males that, in emotionally intense situations, caused them to express their affection by insulting each other?

“TPol?” Trip turned his head just enough that she sensed the weight of his cheek against the hand which had been seeking his pulse. “You did it!” he said, not letting go the scanner, but making a small gesture with it toward the captain.

“No, Trip.” she corrected, brushing the side of his face where she had activated the meld and willing him to understand. “We did it.”

The words rang clear in her memory. My mind to your mind… We will find him… Our minds are one.

But they weren’t. The connection had gone silent. Why, when they had done what they set out to do, was she remembering that draining sense of separation?

“Okay.” Trip said. His face still leaned against her hand. That quirk of a smile came again. She felt it against her palm even as his eyes drifted closed. “Won’t…” 

She thought he was about to say “won’t argue with you”, or perhaps “won’t disagree”, but consciousness had fled.

“We’ve got to get him out of this,” Jonathan was caught in another bout of shivering, but he staggered to his feet and carefully began to shift the uppermost stone. Without a word, TPol rose and circled the rock it rested against with both hands, found its balancing point and held fast until the other was safely moved. Then, aware of the packed, dry dirt beneath her fingers, she loosened her own stone.

Stone with sharp edges. That one goes to the canister. Or should it be the case…?

No, all that sorting… That was Trip, back in the cave, not her. She was in the tunnel lifting a stone that should go on the ground. A stone and another and when they were gone, she’d make certain Trip was covered up warm. She’d douse Jonathan’s blanket with the rest of the coffee and bundle him up again too. She would go to the entrance and contact the ship, find the search party… She would… She was going to… She was… was getting so… Incredibly tired. 

Jonathan’s worried eyes met hers, equally weary. She could see his hands shaking around the edges of the rock he held. “Was he like this when you found him?”

“He was…” she roused herself to consider. “Conscious for longer intervals. But I believe much of that was driven by his desperation that I locate you.”

“And he managed to tell you how to find me? That’s amazing.”

“It was…” She began. 

It was illogical in light of her thoughts about the consequences of evasive semantics, to now find herself still seeking to avoid discussing the fact that she had engaged Trip in a mind meld. She looked at the captain over a large, grey rock and searched for words. But she was too tired to seek out an explanation of something she only in part understood herself, and habits of a lifetime could not be so quickly overcome. “It was a matter of much… interpretation,” she managed.

“Well, I’m glad the two of you could ‘interpret’ each other so well.” TPol couldn’t read the mix of emotions in his voice: Amusement, annoyance, perhaps even an awareness of something withheld. They were all overlaid with fatigue.

She would, had to, tell him what she had done, but not right now. Not when he was so tired. Not when she was so tired that all the voices of memory kept repeating, lonely and dream-like in her head.

My mind to your mind…

Sometime when it didn’t demand all their combined concentration to keep maneuvering one rock… 

Can you hear me?

After another…

Captain?

And another…

“Captain?”


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

 

TPol paused, her fingers curled around the base of a stone. 

Jonathan had turned his head, but not toward Trip.

TPol blinked. Voices were coming down the tunnel, growing louder and closer. They were accompanied by the beam of search lights and the strained and welcome faces of Ensign Mayweather and Lieutenant Reed. Half a step behind them were Ensign Sato and Doctor Phlox.

The doctor looked from Trip, to Jonathan and then at TPol. “Looks like I’m going to be busy,” he said, opening his supply pack, even as Mayweather and Reed moved in to help with the rocks. TPol began to lift the one she was held, then found there was no strength left to set it aside. 

“Here, I’ve got that,” Travis Mayweather gave her a nod as he scooped it from her hands. “You’ve been at this a while. I’ll take over.” 

She let him step into her place without protest and saw Malcolm Reed taking a stone from the Captain’s hands.

“Well, Commander,” Phlox was addressing Trip. “This doesn’t look so bad. You’ve broken your right tibia and torn two ligaments in your knee. There’s a deep scalp laceration and a rather nasty concussion. You’ll need a couple of days complete bed-rest. No, don’t look at me like that. I said, ‘complete bed-rest. Until the dizziness passes. After that, you’ll be as right as rain. Probably won’t remember a thing about any of this.” 

His light, brisk tone rose and fell, rose and fell somewhere far away as TPol took two, three, four steps and leaned her back against the tunnel wall. 

“And it also appears that you have two cracked ribs…” Phlox continued.

…Ribs, Mamma, like falling off the roof again…

And TPol found herself sliding down the wall to sit in a shuddering ball at its base, hugging her arms around her chest as she had when the connection with Trip had broken.   
The search was over. The rescue soon would be. In a little while she would get up, walk out of this cold, dark mine and maybe, instead of those three troublesome moons, she would see what daylight looked like on this world.

Even if her years of training had taught her not to express pride or pleasure, she could have admitted satisfaction in the accomplishments of these last long hours. But there was none, only the lingering sense that she still wandered alone and small in the void of some expanded state of consciousness. 

Doubtless it was an after-effect of performing an untrained meld. She must examine that possibility and determine as best she could how to enact healing on herself… 

But she would close her eyes first A momentary meditation. Just enough to gather a little of the equilibrium that seemed to have scattered after that jolting separation. That was all she would need, a moment…

Voices murmured in relieved, unhurried conversation above her head.

“So how was it you-” That was Ensign Mayweather. “Decided to bring the doc?”

“ I estimated the number of spoken syllables that could fit into the gaps caused by the interference.” Ensign Sato replied. “Then extrapolated.”

The flow of their words was soothing. There was a low appreciative whistle, presumably from Mayweather. She didn’t open her eyes to find out.

“Actually,” said Hoshi. “It was pretty much common sense after I heard both ‘med’ and ‘mergency’. So I contacted Doctor Phlox and…” 

TPol blinked. When had Jonathan sat down next to her? She was uncertain, but there he was, with his head leaning back against the wall, his eyelids drooping almost shut and   
one arm lightly pressing against her own. When had that clean, dry blanket been tucked around his shoulders? It was a real one now, not improvised from her jacket. For that matter, how had she come to have one of her own?

Nearby Phlox was leaning over Trip, pressing a hypo-spray against his neck. TPol listened to its faint hiss and wondered when they had taken all the debris off him and gotten him onto an improvised stretcher without her having been aware of the activity around her. And when had Hoshi’s small, gentle hand settled on her shoulder?

“Commander, we’re about to leave now. May I help you to your feet?”

“Thank you, Ensign.” She nodded and saw that Malcolm was already assisting Jonathan up as Phlox and Travis moved toward the main tunnel with Trip. Standing, she allowed Hoshi to steady her with a hand across her back as they followed the others. She watched entrances to branching tunnels, lantern hooks and sanctuary rooms passing by along with old, half rusted equipment and the gleaming new Enterprise ore canister. 

“I think,” said Malcolm, walking with Jonathan a few paces ahead. “It should be safe enough to come back for the ore canister once we get this lot to the shuttle-pod and…”

TPol could not tell if the captain nodded. But if the ore could be retrieved it would give purpose to this ordeal. Still, she would not tell them about the other canister, sitting in the dark depths of the cavern, or anything else right now for that matter. Talking was too much effort.

They reached the entranceway with its battered table. She remembered coffee, apples, disgusting turkey sandwiches and the too sweet best carrot cake this side of Mars Colony.

There was no need to mark a trail now. She had only to walk beside Hoshi, with the blanket around her shoulders keeping out most of the wind that blew restless clouds across a cold, blue-green sky until the shuttle-pod gleamed through the trees ahead of them. 

With a tired sigh she sank into one of the rear-most seats as the sliding door closed out her view of Algieba. After so much time flickering in and out of Trip’s dizzy, shimmering grey she wasn’t certain how she would have contended with the swirling dazzle of the transporter effect. Still, to rest quiet while Travis piloted them back to Enterprise would be another matter entirely. For this little while, nothing was required of her. The search was over. The captain was safe. Trip was safe. Malcolm could secure the ore if he chose to. Hoshi could contact the ship and tell whoever was on duty all about it. Doctor Phlox could… 

“…take everybody down to sickbay…” 

She blinked her eyes open at the cheerful sound of his voice. He stood in the shuttle-pod’s doorway while, up front, Ensign Mayweather powered down the lights on its control panel. “Captain, you go first with Lieutenant Reed. Ensign Sato, if you will accompany Commander TPol, Ensign Mayweather and I will follow with Commander   
Tucker.”

Apparently, the brief rest had had some restorative effect on her, she realized as she walked with Hoshi through the familiar corridors of the ship. Much of the dream-like quality had faded. The quiet conversations around her no longer ran together, but carried a sense of sequence.   
“If you’re all right from here, Commander,” said Hoshi. “I’ll return to the bridge.”

She nodded as the doors of sickbay hissed open to admit Malcolm, Trip and Travis.  
“I’ll check in with you later,” Jonathan was telling the doctor as Malcolm and Travis emerged a moment later, then started back down the hall in the direction they had just come. “After I go to my quarters, get a hot shower and change out of these wet…”

“No, Captain,” said Phlox, stepping behind him and ushering him in. “No quarters and especially no hot shower. The only place you are going is to your bed, right here in sickbay! When I ran that last check on you in the shuttle-pod your body temperature was still a significant degree below human normal. I want to increase your core readings at a controlled rate. Too quick a rise can cause swelling on the brain. We don’t want you becoming as addled as Mister Tucker was there for a while, do we?”

“Addled?” It was Trip’s voice, very tired and straining to be heard from the stretcher, but when TPol turned to look at him, she could see that whatever the doctor had given him had already produced some effect. His gaze was clearer, more focused than at any time since she’d seen him before he had left for Algieba. Obviously, his concentration had already improved to the degree that he managed to look somewhat insulted at the Doctor’s turn of phrase. It was a welcome expression.

“Besides, Captain,” Phlox went on as he moved with Jonathan across the room to swing open his office door. “Someone has been waiting to see you.”

Porthos, who, if TPol surmised correctly, had been staying there for reassurance and company ever since the landing party went missing, came bounding out, ears and tail flying. With a mighty leap he landed, wriggling, in the captain’s arms. 

“All right, Doctor,” TPol could hear the hoarse tones of weariness in the captain’s voice, but they were warmed by affection as he snuggled the beagle against his chest. “As long as my friend here can…” 

“TPol?” said Trip.

“…stay here in your office. I don’t want to leave him alone in my quarters after…” said the captain, who, accompanied by Porthos and the Doctor, was moving toward a diagnostic bed 

“TPol…” said Trip again. 

She turned to find him looking at her. She caught the last of his request as the captain managed a successful bargain with the doctor. “Could you… Come over here a minute?”

“Yes, Commander?” She asked, crossing the room to stand by his side. 

“Got something…” His words still came between shallow breaths, though the confused quality had gone from his gaze. “In my jacket pocket. Can’t reach… Pulls… too much… on my ribs. Yeah. That’s it… Right pocket. Will you… Get it for me?”

Her fingers brushed across the heavy fabric, felt within the opening and encountered a hard object. She recognized it at the first touch from Trip’s memory, a smooth stone with clear, sharp edges. She knew before she pulled it free that the crystal would be Cyrulinite blue. 

“Kept this,” said Trip. “To remember… our first mission in… seems like forever… with no hostilities and… no battles… Only a chance to…” He paused, closed his eyes and was silent for a moment as if he could read the words he wanted to say on the inside of his eyelids. “To do what we came… Out here for.”

She nodded. “Because you and the captain had an opportunity for some pure exploration, is that correct?”

“Yeah, you got it.” He didn’t move his head to nod, but kept looking up at her. “I want you… to take it. To remember… all you did… To bring us back here safe.”

There it was, prickling hot in her cheeks, the constricting awareness that he was referring to what had happened between them in the tunnel. “Commander,” she said. “It is hardly necessary that you…” 

“What you did…” Trip interrupted. His voice was insistent. Still, it was infinitely tired, so she did not resist when his hand caught the hem of her sleeve and gave a small, beckoning tug. 

Her skin burned with shame at the memory. It wasn’t logical, she told herself. That did not keep her from averting her gaze from his upturned one. 

“TPol,” Trip continued. “I had the idea… when we were… were together in the… the…?”

“It’s called a mind meld.” The words tasted of humiliation, but she said them in a low, unflinching voice.

“Yeah, okay. The mind meld. I had the idea… it cost you a lot to do that. Your pride, your privacy… not sure. A lot of it is… getting pretty blurred.”

“It was necessary,” she said. “I do not regret it.”

No. For his sake, the captain’s, the crew’s, she did not regret it. But for her own? It was one thing, down in the mine, to rail in protest against the admonitions on employing telepathy. Here, now, she couldn’t help but wonder if, useful as the meld had been for the three of them, over all, the temptations of using such an ability could present a real danger. How easily it could be used to invade, to torment, or to manipulate another’s mind. 

She started to straighten and to turn away. The shower in her quarters would be cleansing. She would wash away as much of the past hours as she could, ore dust, blood, cold and memories. 

Trip’s grasp moved from her sleeve to her hand. His fingers intertwined with hers and tugged with what little strength was in them. 

She froze, then stood irresolute. This was not something she wished to discuss. Still, to jerk free of that weak grasp and walk away spoke of panic. That was almost as shameful a loss of control as choosing to link with Trip in the tunnel. There could, after all, have been other options, equally logical and less… She searched for a word for the tangle of emotions that meld had stirred within her and failed. 

Panic, shame and this feeling with no name yet attached to it, they were all just emotions. Deal with them, Doctor Phlox had said. So she would deal. She turned back to Trip and eased his hand to the blanket while encircling it within her own. Her gaze was almost steady as it met his.

“TPol,” He did not give her the opportunity to speak. “Whatever it cost you…” He paused, thought, continued. “Thing is… I appreciate it. We all… owe you one.”

“As I said, Commander, it was necessary.”

“Okay. But if you’re… uncomfortable… with what we did… it doesn’t have to… go in your report. I told you… where to find the captain. You found him… got him out. Then… the two of you… got me out… End of story… far as I’m concerned. Even the captain… doesn’t need… details unless you wanna tell him.”

She had not thought ahead to the report. 

Maybe it was residue from the meld, the years they worked together, or that there was too much tiredness in his face for emotions to tangle its features into a confusing mask. All she read in his blue eyes was infinite tenderness and immense respect. The fact that he wasn’t Vulcan and didn’t know the taboos of her culture didn’t matter. The feelings were real for all that. 

“Unless I want to tell him.” She agreed. “It will remain between us.”

It was only then she allowed her fingers to curl tight around the blue on blue stone. 

 

Epilogue

 

On the low table in TPol’s quarters, the meditation candle still burned bright. But the tea was gone, the cup empty of even its last lingering warmth. Setting it aside, TPol rose and walked back to the monitor. She stared at the words written there.

There had been so much more to the incident on Algieba Three than what she had managed to find words for in the personal logs included with her communication. She wondered if they would be enough to express all she had come both to question and to believe in the past weeks.

The time on Vulcan with Captain Archer and the Syranites had been a time of strain and of revelations. The Vulcan council may, or may not have been acting to oppress the telepathic resources of the population for reasons of its own. The Syranites certainly believed there was some as yet undiscovered agenda behind the formidable moral strictures it had placed on Surak’s mind rules.

These were such uncertain times. Not only on Vulcan, but here, aboard Enterprise as well.

She had slept off much of the meld’s effect over an entire ship’s cycle, then, under Phlox’s orders, been held off two further duty shifts for rest and recovery. It was, in her view, more restful once she resumed her familiar routine of bridge operations. The captain, who developed a respiratory infection after his time in frigid waters, came back three shifts later. It was almost a week before Trip resumed his duties in Engineering.

It was back to business as usual. But everything had changed.

According to Phlox’s daily crew updates, Trip’s dizziness had subsided several weeks ago. So, she noted during oral reports at staff briefings, had his tendency to breathe in quick, shallow gulps. Even the suggestion of a limp had faded, except after long duty shifts. That too would disappear with time. It was only, as the Doctor had conjectured, Trip’s memories that had not been recovered. 

Nor had the easy rapport they shared during the meld. Perhaps it was the confusion between what his mind could tell him and what his heart said about a new closeness in his relationship to her. Moments of painful tenderness alternated with cynical, cryptic comments designed to keep her at a careful distance until he could sort it all out. This he would be unable to do without recovering the memories of what had happened in the tunnel.

She knew of only one way to help him restore those memories. But should she try it? She had only attempted one other contact since then, and she’d had assistance from the one-time carrier of the katra of Surak.

Which brought her back to the half finished document filling her computer screen. After brief consideration, she slipped into the chair and began to write. 

 

Over the span of hours it took to complete the search and rescue of Commander Tucker and yourself, I found my attitudes about engaging Vulcan telepathic abilities, including mind melding, coming into serious question. If Commander Tucker and I had not forged a prior bond, I do not know whether the rescue team would have succeeded in finding either of you for several potentially fatal, hours.  
That leads me to the subterfuge I engaged in with you. When you asked me to attempt a meld with Ensign Sato to retrieve eye-witness information about the kidnapping of Doctor Phlox, I told you I had never initiated one. Technically, this was true. Trip and I had established a definite, though unintended mental connection some time before I reached him in the tunnels on Algieba.   
It was not reluctance to assist you, the Doctor or Ensign Sato that made me hesitate. I did not know if I could initiate a meld with someone I was not bonded to. And, to be honest, Captain, I carried some culturally acquired shame over the pleasure I took in my meld with Commander Tucker, aside from any of our needs at the time.   
When, as the one-time keeper of Surak’s katra, you offered to help with Ensign Sato’s meld, I was simultaneously grateful for that offer, aware of my need to comply and amazed at the lack of shame you displayed about giving your assistance. The attitude you conveyed was so honest and practical, I found that it mirrored the beliefs I was reaching during our hours in the mine.  
That combined with my readings of late, is causing me to make some major revisions to many lifelong beliefs. I am coming to the somewhat uncomfortable realization that with the High Council’s condemnation of mind melding and other telepathic abilities, Vulcan culture has denied itself one of its birthrights.  
I would welcome, Captain, an opportunity to discuss these issues with you at greater length. Perhaps, you would also consider the idea of mentoring me again, this time in some non-emergency melding exercises. I would be most grateful.

TPol studied the last few paragraphs of her communication. It had, she believed, expressed the letter, if not the entire spirit of the issue. The inner peace, the sense of personal completion she had experienced during the two melds she had engaged in to this point was more than words could convey. While the meld with Trip had been a more personal experience, the act with Hoshi had clarified to her that, unlike what she had been told, she was a natural, if untrained, telepath. Her readiness to engage in the practice with Trip had not stemmed from deviance, but her basic nature attempting to assert itself.

She still found the entire subject somewhat confusing. But what area of study was not initially motivated by questions or confusion?

Rising, she picked up the hand held pad and moved to the low table. She gazed at the light pouring from the candle in its center. Was it the misdirection of Captain Archer that caused her difficulty with meditating the past weeks? Or was it her inner turmoil as she tried to adjust to the lack of emotional control brought on by the Trellium? Or was it her attempt to deny that she wished to learn more of her deepest self? Maybe she would access a new portion of the complete writings of Surak and use it for the basis of another meditation attempt. 

There was no doubt in her mind that this one would be successful.

She was scrolling through section titles when the door chime to her quarters sounded.

Setting down the pad, she went to the door. “Come,” she said as she approached it.

When it slid open, she was somewhat surprised to see Commander Tucker gazing at her. He had propped a shoulder against the doorjamb in a not quite casual “I’m just holding up the wall here” pose.

“You ready?” he asked.

“Ready? For what, precisely?” She studied him in some confusion. There was no briefing or planning session scheduled for their next mission. Even if she had spent longer in reminiscences than she had intended, she couldn’t, wouldn’t, have allowed so much time to pass that she had forgotten to attend any of the officers’ functions.

But then, the commander was out of uniform, dressed in casual, off-duty clothes.

“Well, TPol! I’m surprised at you!” exclaimed Trip, fighting a losing battle with a grin. “Famous Vulcan memory and all that!” The sparkle in his blue eyes faded to seriousness. “Look, I know it’s been a while, but… TPol, I’ve… Well, I’ve missed you and I kind of wondered…”

“Wondered what, Commander?”

“Well,” he shrugged. She could sense he was looking for something solid beyond the awkwardness that had grown between them these past weeks. Something familiar. After a moment, he burst out. “Don’t you know what day it is?”

“Commander, I am perfectly aware that it is Tuesday.”

“Tuesday, right.” He nodded, waited the span of a heartbeat then quirked a questioning eyebrow at her. “And that makes this…?”

One more heartbeat and she remembered. Something familiar.

“Movie night.” They said in unison.

“Indeed, the thought had escaped my mind,” said TPol.  
“Well?” asked Trip, more hope and eagerness apparent in his voice than he probably knew. “I know that it’s been a while, but, do you want to come? There’ll be popcorn.”

TPol nodded. “I will be with you in a moment,” she said.

She did not bother to close the door, but allowed him to stand there, watching, as she walked to the small table, set down the pad and blew out the candle.

Just as she had no doubts that, when she returned to light it again, her meditation attempt would succeed, she was equally certain that it could wait.

For a brief moment, she glanced from the rising wisps of smoke to the computer where she had saved Captain Archer’s letter and then to the crystal glimmering blue on blue beside it. Blue on blue… Trip’s one-time memory that she, alone, still carried.

At least for now. 

Without a second glance she turned and walked to the door of her quarters. She paused in the entranceway, reached out a hand and touched Trip’s sleeve before he could start down the hall. “Commander…” TPol began, then started again. “Trip?”

“Yeah?” He turned to look at her.

“After the movie,” she said. “I would like to invite you back here to my quarters.”

He stiffened slightly, but waited for her to go on.

“As you said,” her voice was very quiet. “It has been a while but… I’d like to show you something. And perhaps tell you a story.”

“Okay, afterward. It’s a date.” He grinned. “Come on, TPol. Popcorn’s waiting.” 

TPol stepped away from the door. Whisper-quiet, it slid closed behind her as she and Trip fell into step side by side and started away down the corridor.


End file.
